Sopory is currently Senior Emeritus Scientist at ICGEB.. Former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Until 2011, he was the group leader of plant molecular biology and Director ( Interim) at ICGEB, New Delhi. He discovered the involvement of the glyoxalase system in plant cell stress response, by demonstrating that genetic engineering of the glyoxalase pathway leads to enhanced salinity tolerance; and that methylglyoxal levels in plants under stress are dependent on the enzyme glyoxalase I and glutathione. He also showed that methylglyoxal can act as stress signal in plants. He is a fellow of all science academies of India, and the winner of the Bhatnagar, Maheshwari and Saligram Sinha Awards of India. He was given the Padamshri, one of the highest civilian awards, by the President of India.

Singhvi (PhD Physics, IIT, Kanpur). He served as vice-president, International. Quaternary Union (INQUA) and as Vice President, Indian National Science Academy. He holds DST-SERB- Year of Science Chair Professorship at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, India. He was Av. Humboldt Fellow at the MPI für Kernphysik and Heidelberg U., Germany; Leverhulme Prof., Sheffield U., UK; DAAD Prof., Freiberg, Germany; and Ford Foundation Fellow, Oxford, UK and St. Louis, USA. His honours include: Krishnan and Decennial Medals, Ind. Geophys. Union; Natl. Mineral Award, India; Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Sci. (2004), Geol. Soc. of America; and K. Naha Medal, Ind. Nat. Sci. Acad; Goyal Prize, Kurukshetra U. and B. Sahni Centenary Medal, Indian Science Congress. A fellow of all Indian science academies and Hon. Lifetime Fellow of the Geol. Society London, he served on Sci. Prog. Comm. of UN's IYPE programme. He served as on the editorial boards of several international journals.