Deekshatulu (PhD 1964, IISc Bangalore) is distinguished Fellow, Institute for Research and Development in Banking Technology(IDRBT) (Govt. of India), Hyderabad. He previously was: Professor, IISc; dist. scientist and dir., Natl. Remote Sensing Agency (NRSC), Hyderabad; dir., Centre for Space Science and Technology Education for Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP), 1995-2002; vis. prof., Dept. of Computer Sciences, U. of Hyderabad (2002-2011). His honours include: National Systems Award (Gold Medal), India; Sir M. Viwesraya Award; Brahmprakash Award, INSA; Biren Roy Award; Padma Shri; Om Prakash Bhasin Award; Sivananda Eminent Citizen Award; and the Bhaskara and Aryabhatta awards. His membership includes: Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Delhi; Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore; IEEE, USA; National Academy of Agricultural Sciences Newdelhi, National Academy of Engineering, India, Computer Society of India. Hon Member Asian Assocn. for Remote Sensing.

Goswami is SERB Distinguished Fellow of Government of India at Cotton University in Guwahati. He obtained his PhD from PRL, Ahmedabad, and did postdoctoral research at MIT, Cambridge, USA, and at NASA/GSFC, USA. Returning to India, he worked at CAS/IIT, Delhi and CAOS, IISc, Bangalore between 1985 and 2006. He was Director of IITM, Pune between 2006 and 2014. He was visiting professor at the University of Maryland and Princeton University. He has received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award; Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Award; Kamal Kumari National Award for Science and Technology;National Award in Atmospheric Science and Technology by MoES and the Kalpathi Ramakrishna Ramanathan Medal by INSA. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and Indian Meteorological Society, and member of several national and international commissions and committees.

Sathyamurthy is a theoretical chemist and founder director of the Indian Inst. of Science Education and Research, Mohali. He has made outstanding contributions to molecular reaction dynamics: Relating features of potential energy surface to dynamical outcome; utility of time-dependent quantum mechanics to reactive scattering; and fractals in chemical processes. He has also focused on determining stability and degradation of polysilanes; analysing state of water clusters in a confined nonpolar environment; shapes of boric acid clusters; roles of pentagon and hexagon motifs; and stacking interactions in aromatic systems. He is a fellow of IAS, Bangalore, and INSA, New Delhi. His honours include the INSA Young Scientist, Bhatnagar, Raman and FICCI Awards of India, he was JC Bose National Fellow, Dept. of Science and Technology, New Delhi. Hon. Prof., IISER Mohali.

Balasubramanian is Distinguished Scientist and Director of Research-Emeritus, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, India. After his PhD at Columbia Univ. and postdoctoral research (Univ. of Minnesota), he joined the IIT, Kanpur in 1967. In 1977, he moved to the Univ. of Hyderabad as Professor and later Dean. In 1982, he joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, where he was Director (1992-98). He is Fellow of all science academies of India, the German Acad. of Sciences Leopoldina, the Mauritian Acad. of Sciences, the African Acad. of Sciences, and of AAAS, US; member, Intl. Molecular Biology Network and World Innovation Foundation; winner, TWAS Prize in Medical Sciences; Khwarizmi Award, Iran; Bhatnagar, FICCI, Ranbaxy, Goyal and Bhasin Awards, India; UNESCO KALINGA Prize; Indira Gandhi National Award of India, Popularization of Science; Padma Shri; and Chevalier de l'Orde National du Merite, France. His field of research is: the biology of the eye

Banerjee is a retired Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. He obtained his BE in 1981 from the Bengal Engineering College (Calcutta University), his M.Tech. in 1983 from IIT Delhi, and his PhD in 1988 from IIT Delhi. He was a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur from 1986 to 2009 and of the . His recognition includes the SS Bhatnagar Prize, the Citation Laureate award of Thomson Reuters, and Fellowships of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Science Academy, the National Academy of Sciences India, and the IEEE.

Dhar obtained his MSc in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He has been at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai since 1978. He has worked on the problems in disordered systems, in particular relaxation in disordered magnets. His most influential work has been in the area of self-organized criticality, finding models which can be solved exactly. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, and of the National Academy of Sciences. He is recipient of the Young Scientist Award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Physics, the JR Schrieffer Prize of the ICTP, TWAS prize in Physics, and the SN Bose medal of the Indian National Science Academy.

Mukherjee is Professor Emeritus, Raman Center for Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences, and the Ex-Director of the Indian Assoc. for the Cultivation of Science. He is also adjunct professor of the Theoretical Chemistry Dept., Nanjing University. He is recognized for his work on quantum many-body theory, especially multi-reference coupled-cluster approaches, and other areas of theoretical chemistry and theoretical spectroscopy. His awards include: Humboldt Prize of Germany, 2010, SS Bhatnagar, 1987; Asutosh Mukherjee, 1965; Jagdish Shankar Memorial Award, INSA, 1994; Fukui Memorial Prize, Asia-Pacific Assoc. of Theoretical and Computational Chemists (APATCC), 2008; Silver Medal, Chemical Research Soc. of India, 1999 and the Medal of the Centre of Applied Wave Mechanics, France (2014). He is a fellow of all Indian academies of sciences; APATCC; and Intl. Academy of Quantum Molecular Sciences.

Sanyal is a Professor and former Director at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP). He obtained his PhD from University of Bombay in 1987 working at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He worked in Brookhaven National Laboratory as Research Associate. He has served in various capacities at National and International bodies, like Co-Chairperson of the India-Japan Science Council (2014-Present), Member, Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet, Government of India 2010-Present, President, Indian Physics Associations and Indian Physical Society (2011-2014). Sanyal is Fellow of all the three Indian science academies. Sanyal has made significant contributions in understanding of structure-property relationship of the nanomaterials that produce novel properties due to confinement-induced ordering. Particularly, he has done pioneering work in synchrotron x-ray scattering techniques.

VijayRaghavan is Emeritus Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bangalore, India and Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India. He studied engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, from which he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award. He pursued his doctoral work at TIFR, Mumbai, India, and postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology, USA. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Biology, the Infosys Science Prize in the Life Sciences and is a JC Bose fellow of the Indian Government.

Chakravorty got his MSc (Tech) at Calcutta University and PhD (1965) from Penn State University USA. He is currently emeritus professor,SERB Distinguished Fellow of DST and INSA Emeritus Scientist at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata, where he also served as director during 1993-1999. He was also Professor and Head, Advanced Centre for Materials Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur during 1976-1982 His research contributions include a wide range of nanocomposites and their electrical,magnetic, magnetodielectric and multiferroic properties. He is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences, and has won the MRSI Medal, MRSI ICSC Prize,INSA Prize for Materials Science, Nano Science and Technology Award of DST, New Delhi and Materials Scientist of the Year Award of MRSI 2014.