Dr. Chandrima Shaha is a biologist, currently, JC Bose Chair Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata. She is the immediate past President of the Indian National Science Academy and Former Director of the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi. Her research interests center around the elucidation of the processes that influence cell death programs under varying physiological conditions in diverse organisms. She is an elected fellow of the World Academy of Sciences, the Indian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology. She served as Vice-President of International Affairs of the Indian National Science Academy and as a member of the Councils of all three National Academies. Notable awards include the Ranbaxy Science Foundation Award for basic sciences; the J.C. Bose National Fellowship; the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Medal of INSA, Shakuntala Amir Chand Award of the Indian Council of Medical Research, Prof. Archana Sharma Memorial Award of the National Academy of Sciences, Life Time Achievement Award of Biopharma Honors and the Chandrakala Hora Memorial Medal and others.

Mukhi (PhD, 1981, Stony Brook) is Raja Ramanna Chair, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. After acquiring his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Stony Brook University, he spent two years as post-doctoral fellow at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste in the group of Prof. Abdus Salam. He went on to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, where he worked for 28 years and held the offices of Dean, Graduate Studies and Chair, Theoretical Physics. He has published extensively in the areas of Quantum Field Theory, Supersymmetry, Conformal Field Theory and String Theory. He has spent sabbaticals at the Institute of Advanced Study Princeton (where he is also a trustee of the Association of Members), CERN, Geneva, and Trinity College, Cambridge. His awards include the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize for Physical Sciences and the J.C. Bose Fellowship, and he is an Editor of the Journal of High Energy Physics. He has a keen interest in Academic Ethics and has chaired Ethics Committees at the Tata Institute, IISER Pune, the Indian Academy of Sciences and presently at TWAS.