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.

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. Ray is currently employed as a scientist at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI), New Delhi, India. Before joining ICAR-IARI as a scientist, he worked as a scientist at ICAR-National Rice Research Institute (ICAR-NRRI), Odisha, India and ICAR-Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibres (ICAR-CRIJAF), Kolkata, India. Plant stress biology is the area of his interest. He has mostly worked on rice, with a special focus on gaining an understanding of and devising strategies to deal with different biotic and abiotic stresses. During his tenure at ICAR-CRIJAF, he was involved in functional genomics of jute for improving stem rot tolerance and also in understanding the process of fibre development with the ultimate objective of improvement of fibre yield and quality. Understanding the evolutionary biology of crops and crop improvement through genomic introgression from wild relatives of crop species has also been another area of his interest. Presently, he is working on genome editing of rice to understand and improve multiple stress tolerance traits.

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.