Lal is dist. univ. prof. of soil science and dir., Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State U., Columbus. After obtaining his PhD at Ohio State and completing postdoctoral work at The U. of Sydney, Australia, in 1969, he joined the Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. He returned to Ohio State in 1987 where he has taught two classes: environmental soil physics, and soils and climate change, and conducted research on soil carbon sequestration, soil restoration and food security. Honours include: three h.c. doctorates; Hugh Hammond Bennett Award (1998); Borlaug Award (2005); IPCC Nobel Peace Prize certificate; Zayed Prize diploma, Liebig Award (2006). He is a fellow of five societies, incl. the American Assn. for Adv. of Science (1996) and The Rothamsted (2013). He has authored 15 and edited 56 books, and has about 1700 scientific articles to his credit.

Ramesh is Prof. Satish Dhawan Professor, Geosciences Division, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India. He is one of the pioneering stable isotope geochemists in India. He obtained his MSc from the University of Madras in 1978 and his PhD in physics at Gujarat University in 1986. His contributions include: Characterization and quantification of global change processes, especially paleoclimates; demonstrated that stable isotope variations in tree rings and sand corals are related to climatic parameters; and demonstrated that peat samples from south India preserved a record of paleomonsoon changes. He has reconstructed past monsoon variations from marine sediments and speleothems. He is a fellow of all three science academies of India. His awards include: Young Scientist Award, INSA, 1987; SS Bhatnagar Award, 1998; TWAS Prize in Earth Sciences, 2006; K.R. Ramanathan Gold Medal 2011; ISRO Lifetime achievement award-2016

Chandrasekhar is the Director of the National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneshwar, India. He is on a deputation from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He obtained his PhD in 1982 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He investigates main-group organometallic chemistry, inorganic rings, metal clusters and cages. He also works on materials with emphasis on catalysis, magnetism and photophysical properties. He is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences of India. His honours include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi, the Friedrich Wilhelm-Bessel Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, the JC Bose National Fellowship by the Dept. of Science and Technology, New Delhi and the SASTRA-CNR Rao award.

Pal is a distinguished scientist and former Director of Indian Statistical Institute. He founded its Machine Intelligence Unit & the Natl. Center for Soft Computing in Calcutta. Currently, he is a SERB-National Science Chair; ISI-President and Emeritus Professor; and AICTE-Distinguished Chair Professor. Obtained PhD (Sc) from Calcutta U. and PhD (Engg) & DIC from Imperial College, London. Worked at UC Berkeley; UMD, College Park; NASA JSC, Houston; and US Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC. His awards include: SS Bhatnagar; Padma Shri; GD Birla; OP Bhasin; J Nehru Fellowship; FICCI; Vikram Sarabhai; IETE-Wadhwa Gold Medal; INSA-Zaheer Medal; ISC-PC Mahalanobis Gold Medal; INAE Chair Professor; INSA Distinguished Professor; INAE-SN Mitra; INSA-JNBC Lecture; JC Bose Natl. Fellow; DAE Raja Ramanna Fellow; Al-Khwarizmi Intl. 1st Prize; NASA Space Act Tech Brief; NASA Patent Appl.; IEEE Distinguished Speaker; IEEE NN Soc. Outstanding Paper; NRC (USA) Senior Associate; and IEEE Editor. He is Fellow of all 4 Indian sci. and engg. academies, IEEE, IAPR, IFSA, IRSS & AAIA; and Member of European Acad of Sci & Arts. He has visited 45 countries as keynote/invited speaker and academic visitor.

Jemmis is professor of chemistry at IISc, Bangalore. He studies the structure and reactivity problems of real life molecules, clusters and solids using theoretical techniques. He has successfully linked different areas of chemistry through his computational chemical approach. His major contributions include theoretical study of transition metal complexes of fullerenes and their ring-opened alternatives; a unifying electron-counting rule for polyhedral boranes, metallaboranes, and metallocenes; electronic structural requirements for macro-polyhedral boranes and elemental boron; establishment of novel analogies between carbon and boron, and on the structures and reactions of transition metal organometallics. Recently he has formulated electron counting rules for borophenes and borophites. The interplay between hexagonal hole density and interlayer bond density provides infinite options multilayer borophenes. He is a fellow of all science academies of India, winner of the INSA Young Scientist Prize, SS Bhatnagar Prize, Millennium Medal of Indian CSIR and other national science honours. Govt of India honored him with the civilian award, Padma Shri.

Manoharan is Distinguished Fellow INSA in the Department of Chemistry of IIT, Madras. He obtained his PhD from Columbia Univ. and was a research assoc. at Michigan State Univ. He was in the Faculty of Chemistry both in IIT/Kanpur and IIT/Madras. He founded the premier Regional Sophisticated Instrumentation Centre to serve Indian scientists. He was Vice Chancellor at the Univ. of Madras (1997-99); Institute emeritus professor, CSIR, emeritus scientist, and DST Ramanna Fellow all at IIT, Madras, and honorary professor at JNCASR, Bangalore and INSA Senior Scientist. He was also Raman Chair Professor at IGNOU New Delhi (2009-2012).He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences and served as the Scientific Secretary of INSA. He has received several awards and medals including the FICCI award, Palit Award, Rangadhama Award of the INSA, Sadhan Basu Memorial Award, and the CRSI Gold medal, a life-time achievement award by the Intl. EPR Society.

Ramaswamy obtained his PhD in 1978 at Princeton University and worked at the Jawaharlal Nehru University between 1986 and 2018. He has made fundamental contributions in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, particularly on the control and synchronization of chaotic and stochastic systems. His interests also extend to genomics and biological physics, in particular to nonequilibrium processes at the cellular and subcellular level. His membership includes the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and he has served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad between 2011 and 2015. He was President of the Indian Academy of Sciences in the period 2016-2018.

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.