Shahzad A. Pandith received his MSc in Botany from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar in 2009 and PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from CSIR Indian Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu, India in 2017. Since then, he is serving the Department of Botany, University of Kashmir as DST-INSPIRE Faculty (position equivalent to IITian Assisstant Professor). In this capacity, he is supervising a DST-sponsored project on one of the important medicinal herbs from NW Himalayas, Rheum. In general, Dr. Shahzad seeks to use various 'omics' approaches to elucidate and understand the basic biology of plants, important pathways operating in them and their modulation, rate limiting pathway genes and the regulatory factors controlling their constitutive/inducible expression vis-à-vis ecological/environmental factors and/or stress conditions. He has published about 15 research papers in highly reputed peer reviewed international journals with an average impact of about 3 per paper. Besides, he is an active reviewer of many reputed journals from well-known publishing houses like Springer, Elsevier and Brill, etc. Dr. Shahzad has many national level exams and awards to his credit, which include the Joint CSIR-UGC JRF and ICAR-ASRB NET exams, and the highly prestigious DST-INSA Inspire Faculty award.

Mohd Ishfaq Khan holds Bachelor's degree in Science (B.SC) from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar and received his M.Sc degree in Botany from the same institution in 2015. Since 2017 he is actively engaged in a DST sponsord project at the University of Kashmir. His active areas of research include DNA barcoding, genetics, taxonomy and eco-physiology which he uses to understand and resolve the genetic/taxonomic complexity in high value medicinal herbs from NW Himalayas. He has some good research articles to his credit. Besides, he has qualified many competitive exams at state and national level including GATE-2019 (Gaduate Aptitude Test In Engineering) in the subject of Life Sciences. Mr. Ishfaq also holds a Bachelor's Degree in the subject of Education and has been a good teacher-cum-motivator for children at higher secondary level.