Kandikere R. Sridhar is an adjunct faculty member at Mangalore and Yenepoya Universities, India. His main areas of research are Diversity and Ecology of Fungi of the Western Ghats and Marine Habitats. He was NSERC postdoctoral fellow/visiting professor at: Mount Allison University, Canada; Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ and Martin Luther University, Germany; Centre of Biology, University of Minho, Portugal. He is a Distinguished Asian Mycologist and Outstanding Leader in Education and Research at the Association of Agricultural Technology, Southeast Asia. He is placed in the world's top 2% of scientists in mycology.

Sunil K. Deshmukh is a veteran industrial mycologist who has spent a significant part of his career at Hoechst Marion Roussel Limited, Mumbai and Piramal Enterprises Limited, Mumbai. He has also served as Fellow at Nano-Biotechnology Centre, TERI, New Delhi and Adjunct Associate Professor at Deakin University, Australia. He is a fellow of the Mycological Society of India (MSI), the Association of Biotechnology and Pharmacy, the Scoiety for Applied Biotechnology and the Maharashtra Academy of Science. He was the past President of the Mycological Society of India (2017). He has over 120 publications, 8 patents and has edited 10 books.