Shashi Kant Bhatia, PhD, Editor-in-Chief
Shashi Kant Bhatia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea, and has more than ten years of experience in the area of biowastes valorization into bioplastic, bioenergy, and biochemicals. Dr. Bhatia has contributed extensively to the industrial press and served as an editorial board member and Associate Editor for several peer-reviewed journals, including Microbial Cell Factories. He has published more than 150 research and review articles on industrial biotechnology, bioenergy production, biomaterial, biotransformation, microbial fermentation, and enzyme technology in international scientific peer-reviewed journals, edited 4 books, and holds 12 international patents. He was selected to the Top 2% Scientist List of Stanford University. He earned an M.Sc and a Ph.D. in biotechnology at Himachal Pradesh University (India). He has qualified JNU combined biotechnology entrance, DBT-JRF, GATE, CSIR exams. Dr. Bhatia has worked as a Brain Pool Post Doc Fellow at Konkuk University (2014–2016), South Korea.
Saurabh Bhatia, PhD, Associate Editor
Saurabh Bhatia is a pharmaceutical biologist with 14 years of research and academic experience in a multitude of transdisciplinary research related to pharmaceutical, natural, and food-based products. In his role as an Associate Professor in the NMSRC at University of Nizwa, Oman, he is leading a biomaterial lab. He holds dual expertise in Pharmaceutical and Food packaging science. He has completed his Ph.D. program (2015) in Pharmaceutical Technology from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His current research interest is based on development, characterization, and biological assessment of biopolymer-based composite films for food packaging, such as edible films and coating materials, and biomedical applications, including bioadhesive and sublingual films. To date, Dr. Bhatia’s research has resulted in more than 110 peer-reviewed publications in various recognized pharmaceutical and food journals and authored 11 books. He was selected to the Top 2% Scientist List of Stanford University. He is serving as a board member for several peer-reviewed journals like npj Science of Food.
Konstantina Kourmentza, PhD, Associate Editor
Konstantina Kourmentza is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a member of the Green Chemicals Beacon of Excellence, specializing in materials science and bioprocess engineering. Her work particularly delves into microbial fermentation design, use of greener alternatives for downstream processes, and the extensive characterization of bio-products for identifying high-value applications. Her overarching aim is promoting sustainable practices in circular bioeconomy and developing innovative bio-based products with tailored properties. Dr Kourmentza has been awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014-2016), and in her career she has been involved in several EU and National research projects that promoted academia-industry partnerships (EU Horizontal Research activities involving SMEs Co-Operative Research, BBI-JU, UKRI, BBSRC, Royal Society etc.). She has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles on microbial biotechnology, biopolymers and bio-products application. In the past five years she has been acting as an expert for the European Research Executive Agency. She is also an expert for EPSRC and BBSRC research councils in the UK.
Maria Eugenia Inda-Webb, PhD, Associate Editor
Maria Eugenia Inda-Webb is a Pew Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT, USA. She is building biosensors to diagnose and treat inflammatory disorders in the gut, such as inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease. Specifically, she is equipping the bacteria dwelling in the intestines with sensors to recognize the molecular markers of inflammation and command them as sentinels to patrol the gut and secrete therapeutic molecules in situ. Maria started and has led the MIT microbiome journal club with the support of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics (CMIT) at MIT/MGH since 2019. She is the 2020 Langer Fellow for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence—American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), 2018 MIT IMPACT Fellow, the recipient of the EMBO/EMBL SynBio-poster award (Heidelberg, 2015) and the American Society for Microbiology's first Agar Art contest award (2015). Inda-Webb is thrilled to serve as an MIT-Comm Lab advisor using her prowess to help students show the value of their ideas and push their scientific career forward.
Tae Seok Moon, PhD, Associate Editor
Prof. Moon is an EBRC council member, the Moonshot Bio founder, and the SynBYSS chair. He aims to solve global agricultural, environmental, manufacturing, and health problems through engineering biology. His research projects have been supported by Gates Foundation and 12 different US agencies (23 external grants), and he has secured >$10M (>$37M for the entire teams since 2012). These projects and his prior efforts have resulted in 83 publications, 155 invited talks, and 10 patents. His achievements have been recognized with awards, including a Langer Prize, a B&B Daniel I.C. Wang Award, an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, and a John Sluder Fellowship (MIT) to name some.
Shivraj Hariram Nile, PhD, Associate Editor
Dr. Shivraj Hariram Nile is currently working as Scientist-C at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), India. Previously, he worked as KU-Brain Pool post-doctoral fellow (2012-2014), Konkuk University, South Korea. He has more than ten years research experience in food science, phytochemistry, biotechnology and nanotechnology. Dr. Nile has more than 110 research publications, 3 patents 5 book chapters, and 6 research projects on his credit and He received 15 national and international research awards. Completed various research projects sanctioned in India, Korea and China. Received KU-pioneer Research Award for high citations, Recognized as Highly cited Researcher -2022, ClarivateTM, Selected as Top 2% Scientist list (2020, 2021, 2022) of Stanford University. Elected as Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences, Member of Editorial Board of 10 International Scientific journals. His expertise is food science, biochemistry, pharmacology, natural products, nanotechnology, and drug discovery. His research mainly focused on functional food, natural colorants, drug.
Vijai Singh, PhD, Associate Editor
Vijai Singh is an Associate Professor and Head of Department of Biosciences, School of Science at Indrashil University, Rajpur, Mehsana, Gujarat, India. He was an Assistant Professor in Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology at the Institute of Advanced Research, Gandhinagar, India and also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology at the Invertis University, Bareilly, India. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology, Paris, France and School of Energy & Chemical Engineering at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea. He received his Ph.D. in Biotechnology (2009) from the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources/Uttar Pradesh Technical University, Lucknow, India. His research interests are focused on design of novel biosynthetic pathways for production of important biomolecules. His works on CRISPR-Cas9 tools for genome editing and regulation. He has more than 10 years of research and teaching experience in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, bioinformatics, microbiology, and industrial microbiology. He has published more than 90 articles, 70 book chapters, 25 books and 3 patents. He serves as an Associate Editor and editorial board member for several peer-reviewed journals, including Microbial Cell Factories. He is also a member of the Board of Study and Academic Council of Indrashil University and is the Member Secretary of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBSC) at the same University.
See the whole Editorial Board Here
