Professor KC Bansal is a former Director of the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi. He also spearheaded the National Transgenic Crop Network across various ICAR research institutions.
His research interests include functional genomics and transgenic development for abiotic stress tolerance in plants; developed the first series of transgenic crops with improved tolerance to drought and salt stress. His work on functional characterization of LEA, MYB, sHSP and osmotin gene is well known. The first ABA receptor gene OsPYL10 from an Indian drought tolerant rice landrace was cloned by his lab.
He took an unprecedented initiative to evaluate the entire wheat germplasm (~ 22000 accessions) conserved at the Indian National Genebank, and identified trait-specific reference sets.
Prof. Bansal served as Vice-Chair (Asia), Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, FAO, United Nations (2013-15). He is recipient of the Indian Science Congress award conferred on him by the Prime Minister of India, and the Haryana Vigyan Ratna (Highest State Science award).
Prof. Bansal is elected Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the National Academy of Science, India. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Dr. Michael Jones is the Foundation Director of the WA State Agricultural Biotechnology program. His research focuses on the molecular basis of interactions between crop plants and pests/pathogens (nematodes, insects, viruses), and innovative control methods. He is particularly interested in transgenic plants, new breeding technologies, gene editing (e.g., wheat, potato), and technology regulation, with a strong desire to translate R&D into societal benefits. He has authored over 300 publications and supervised 70 PhD students.

Prof Kutubuddin A Molla, Scientist from ICAR-NRRI Odisha, India. Dr. Molla's areas of specialization are CRISPR/Cas tools development, Precise Genome Editing, Base Editing, Genetic Engineering, Transgenesis, Host-pathogen interaction.
His previous positions were: He was Fullbright Visiting Scholar, Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, Pennsylvania State University, USA (2017-2019). He was the Scientist, Division of Genomic Resources, ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi. He has many publications and book chapters to his credit and is the recipient of many awards and recognitions.

Dr. Soham Ray is a Senior Scientist (Agricultural Biotechnology) in the Division of Plant Physiology at ICAR–Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. He completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from IARI and began his scientific career at ICAR–Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in 2012. In 2020, he joined IARI, where he has since been actively involved in genome-editing research. His work centres on plant stress biology, with the goal of understanding how crops respond to major biotic and abiotic stresses and contributing to the development of climate-resilient varieties. During his Ph.D., Dr. Soham Ray cloned and characterized the AvrPi54 gene from the rice blast pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae, for which he holds a patent. As a scientist, he has developed a novel strategy for identification of low-cost cross-transferable co-dominant markers to facilitate gene introgression from wild-relatives to cultivated crops and also contributed to studies on plant responses to environmental stresses individually and in combinations. He has also developed a copyrighted Windows-based software tool CRISP- PTG-Assembler that streamlines primer design for multiplex CRISPR/Cas9 applications. Besides, he is a co-developer of the genome-edited rice Pusa DST1 developed by ICAR- IARI. Dr. Soham Ray is the recipient of the Prof. M. Udayakumar Memorial Young Scientist Award (2023) conferred by Indian Society for Plant Physiology and the Young Scientist Award (2024) conferred by the Academy of Agricultural Science, Kalyani, West Bengal. His current research employs genetic screens, including overexpression and CRISPR/Cas9- mediated gene knockout, to support the development of stress-resilient crop varieties.