Desiraju obtained his BSc (1972) from the U. of Bombay and PhD (1976) from the U. of Illinois, Urbana. He was in the U.of Hyderabad between 1979 and 2009. In 2009, he joined the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He is a very well known structural chemist. His books on crystal engineering (Elsevier, 1989) and the weak hydrogen bond (OUP, 1999) are now standard works with 4000 and 6000 citations respectively. He co-authored a textbook in crystal engineering in 2011. He is on the past or present editorial advisory board of Angewandte Chemie, Chem. Communications and the J. of the American Chem. Soc.. He is a Past President of the International Union of Crystallography. He received the Humboldt Forschungspreis in 2000 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina in 2013. He received the ISA Medal for science of the University of Bologna in 2018. He is one of the most highly cited Indian scientists with an H-index of 101.

Hasan is Senior Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. She obtained her Ph.D at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1983. Research from her group has contributed to an understanding of signaling mechanisms underlying maturation of neural circuits and their dysregulation in disease. Her memberships include the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Ghosh is currently Distinguished Professor and Dean, Academic Affairs at the UM-DAE-Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, University of Mumbai, Kalina Campus, Santacruz (East), Mumbai 400098, India. Earlier he served as Head of the Theoretical Chemistry Section, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India, and senior professor and dean-academic (chemical sciences) at Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, India. He was educated at the University of Burdwan, India (MSc), and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (PhD, 1982). He has worked in different areas of theoretical chemistry, dealing with density functional theory at different length scales and time-dependent systems, theory of chemical binding, structure of soft matter at interfaces, dynamics in condensed phase and modeling materials for energy applications. He is a fellow of all three national science academies of India and is recipient of the TWAS Prize in Chemistry, silver medal of the Chemical Research Society of India, JC Bose National Fellowship of DST, India, Jagdish Shankar Memorial Lecture Award of INSA and D.Sc. (honoris causa) from Kalyani University, India.

Kumar, Anil (PhD, IIT, Kanpur, 1969) is NASI-Senior Scientist Platinum Jubilee fellow, Indian Inst. of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He was postdoc, Georgia Tech., 19anilnmr@physics.iisc.ernet.in69-70; UNC at Chapel Hill, 1970-72; and ETH, Zurich, 1973-76, with R. Ernst (Nobel Pr., Chem. 1991). He joined the faculty at IISc in 1977, and served as chair., Dept. of Physics and convener, NMR Facility. He did sabbaticals at ETH Zurich, 1979-80, with K. Wüthrich (Nobel Pr., Chem., 2002), and UNC Chapel Hill, 1989-90. He is a fellow, Indian Acad. of Sciences, 1987; Natl. Acad. of Sciences, India (NASI), 1989; Indian Natl. Science Acad., 1991 and Intl. Soc. for Magnetic Resonance, 2009. He is the recipient of Sir CV Raman Award, UGC; Platinum Jubilee Lecture Award, Indian Science Congress; MSIL Chair, IISc; INSA Lecture Award; FICCI Award; Alumni Award, IISc; Goyal Prize; DAE-Raja Ramanna Prize Lecture, JNCASR; and JC Ghosh Award.