Fungal Biorefineries

Dr. Sachin Kumar is a Deputy Director in the Biochemical Conversion Division at the Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Bio-Energy, Kapurthala, India. He was as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, USA for a year. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India and has more than twelve years of research experience in Biochemical Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels including lignocellulosic ethanol, biogas, biohydrogen, etc. He has completed six research projects and one consultancy project and actively engaged in two on-going research projects. Dr. Sachin has published more than 45 papers in peer reviewed journals, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings and 7 edited books. He has one granted US patent and one filed Indian patent. He has delivered more than 15 invited/plenary lectures and presented more than 60 papers in national and international conferences. He is a recipient of 2016 ASM-IUSSTF Indo-US Research Professorship and selected as Bioenergy-Awards for Cutting Edge Research (B-ACER) Fellow 2016 by DBT and IUSSTF.

Dr. Pratibha Dheeran is working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany, Maharaj Singh College, Saharanpur, India. Dr. Dheeran has Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Jiwaji University, Gwalior/Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun India. She has master degree in Biotechnology from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee and MSc in Botany from Chaudhary Charan Singh University Meerut. She has been awarded DST Fast Track Young Scientist Grant by Department of Science and Technology, India. She is a recipient of Innovation Postdoctoral Fellowship by Cape Peninsula University of Technology Cape Town, South Africa. Dr. Dheeran has eight years of research experience in Biocatalysis, Thermophilic microbiology and Biofuels. She has eight research papers in various peer-reviewed journals, three book chapters and three conference proceedings.

Dr. Mohammad Taherzadeh is professor in Bioprocess technology since 2004 at University of Borås in Sweden and director of the research school at Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery. Prof. Taherzadeh has PhD in Bioscience from Sweden, and MSc and BSc in Chemical Engineering from Iran. He is developing processes to convert wastes and residuals to value added products such as ethanol, biogas, human food, animal feed, and biopolymers by fermentation. He has worked with filamentous fungi since 1999 and has many publications on industrial applications of the fungi and developing fungal-based biorefineries. He has more than 220 publications in scientific peer-reviewed journals, 19 book chapters, 5 patents and 3 books. 

Dr. Samir Kumar Khanal is an Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.  Dr. Khanal is a leading researcher, internationally in the field of anaerobic digestion, waste-to-resources and environmental biotechnology. He wrote and published a book entitled “Anaerobic Biotechnology for Bioenergy Production: Principles and Applications” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, Bestseller). Recently he also published a bioenergy textbook entitled Bioenergy: Principles and Application (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). Dr. Khanal is an Associate Editor of Bioresource Technology. He is a recipient of CTAHR Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (2016), University of Hawaii at Manoa.