Amita Pal Editor

Dr Malay Das, after obtaining his PhD in Plant Biology at Bose Institute, Kolkata in 2005, Dr. Das did his postdoctoral studies at three internationally reputed laboratories for a period of seven years at US-Environmental Protection Agency, Oregon, USA; Virginia Tech, USA and Helmholtz Zentrum, Munich, Germany. Subsequently, he returned back to India and joined the newly established Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, Kolkata as an Assistant Professor where he served as the Head from 2018-2019. He has been involved in bamboo research since Ph. D. and have already published 12 papers on diverse aspects of bamboo biology such as tissue culture, genetic diversity, phylogeny, molecular marker and flowering genes. He has already completed two projects funded by DBT, India and CSIR, India on identification and characterization of flowering genes from tree bamboos. Currently, two more project, one on small RNA sequencing of miRNAs related to bamboo flowering (funded by CSIR) and another one on characterization of cellulose-lignin pathway genes in bamboos (funded by DBT) are being implemented under his supervision. One of his resent international collaborations on evolutionary characterization of flowering gens in bamboo with Prof. Annette Becker at Justus-Liebig-University, Germany has been funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.

He is an Associate Editor in BMC Genomics (section Plant Genomics) since 2018 and have already handled more than 30 papers. In addition. He is actively involved in scientific reviews for many journals of international repute. He has reviewed 85 papers in last three years. He is a fellow of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and General Body Member of the Archana Sharma Foundation of Calcutta. Two of his supervised students have already been awarded Ph. D. degree and four more are expected to submit their Ph. Thesis soon. In addition, he has already supervised master’s thesis of 17 students.

Dr. Liuyin Ma received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2013 and joined Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (FAFU) as an associate professor in 2014. His research focuses on elucidating nutrient signals and stress tolerance mechanisms in plants, particularly in Moso bamboo and Chinese fir. Currently, he is the chief scientist of the Nutrient Signaling and Stress Resistance Project (2022-2025) for the Forestry Peak Discipline at FAFU. He has published over fifteen research articles in international journals such as PNAS, New Phytologist, Plant Journal, Plant and Cell Physiology and Plant Science. He is now a member of Early Careers Editorial Board (2022-2024) in Forestry Research.

Prof. Amita Pal did her PhD and Postdoc in the Department of Botany, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India in Genetics and Plant Tissue and Organ Culture. Subsequently she joined Bose Institute, Kolkata as the Assistant Professor and retired as Senior Professor after serving more than three decades. Based on her contributions in Science she had received Young Scientist Medal from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) New Delhi in the year 1979 and also Kothari Research Award. She also served the academic community as CSIR Emeritus Scientist and UGC Emeritus Fellow. She visited Harvard University, USA as FAO Fellow; as Visiting Scientist at the Czech Republic Academy of Sciences Olomoch, Ceske-Budejovice and Prague, and as Visiting Scientist Hungary Academy of Sciences, Szeged, sponsored by INSA Hungary during her tenure at the Bose Institute. She had received Biotechnology National Associateship award from DBT and worked at the BARC, Mumbai. Elected member of the Plant Tissue Culture Association of India; Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, 2005; Elected Fellow of the West-Bengal Academy of Science & Technology, 2014; Received S.C. Dutta memorial award from the Botanical Society of Bengal for the year 2016; Elected to deliver the 13th J. C. Sengupta endowment lecture, 2016, organized by the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology, Kolkata; Elected to deliver the first A K Sharma memorial lecture 2019, at Calicut, organized by the Indian Botanical Society. Served various academic committees including PhD Committee, Board of Studies of different Universities in and around Kolkata. Served as Member of the Task Force Committee of Bioinformatics, computational Science and Systems Biology DBT, New-Delhi for 6 years. Guided number of PhD and Post-doc scholars; served as member of the Editorial Board and as Associate Editor of number of International Journals. At present Editor of ‘The Nucleus’, International journal of Cytology and Genetics, co-published by Springer-Nature; and elected President of the Archana Sharma Foundation of Calcutta since 2018.

Prof. Chittaranjan Kole is an internationally reputed scientist with an illustrious professional career of spanning over thirty-four years and original contributions in the fields of plant genomics, biotechnology and molecular breeding leading to the publication of more than 160 quality research articles and reviews. He has edited over 100 books for the leading publishers of the world including Springer, Wiley-Blackwell and Taylor and Francis Group. His scientific contributions and editing acumen have been appreciated by seven Nobel Laureates including Profs. Norman Borlaug, Arthur Kornberg, Werner Arber, Phillip Sharp, Günter Blobel, Lee Hartwell and Roger Kornberg. He has been honored with a number of Fellowships, Honorary Fellowships, and national and international awards including the Outstanding Crop Scientist award conferred by the International Crop Science Society. He has served at all prestigious positions in academia including as Vice-Chancellor BC Agricultural university, Project Coordinator of Indo-Russian Center of Biotechnology in India, and Director of Research of Institute of Nutraceutical Research of Clemson University, in USA. He worked also in the Pennsylvania State University and Clemson University as Visiting Professor in USA. Recently, he has been awarded with the Raja Ramanna Fellow by the Department of Energy, Government of India. He is also heading the International Climate-Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium and International consortium for Phytomedomics and Nutriomics as their founding Principal Coordinator.