Forests for Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth

Dr. Purabi Saikia is working in the broad areas of plant ecology including phytosociology, population and regeneration ecology, conservation of rare, endangered plant species, plant-soil interactions, plant population and invasive species mapping, and biomass estimation. She is presently working as Assistant Professor in Department of Environmental Sciences, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi. She is an active member of IUCN-Commission on Ecosystem Management, South Asia as well as Global Forests Biodiversity Initiatives (GFBI), USA. She is recipient of PHSS-Foundation Young Women Leadership award 2018-2019, SERB-Young Scientists Scheme, UGC-start-up grant, international travel support scheme from SERB, and DBT Research Associate. She is engaged with various R&D projects including NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR), and Airborne Hyperspectral Sensing (AVIRIS-NG) missions for vegetation monitoring as well as DBT sponsored mapping and quantitative assessment of plant resources of Central India. She has published several articles in various journals and books including one in Nature as well as in Science. Dr. Amit Kumar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geoinformatics, Central University of Jharkhand, India. He is involved in interdisciplinary research with a focus on man-environment interaction, disaster risk and resilience, and climate change implications primarily in the urban milieu. His main areas of research are improving urban ecology through physio-socio-economic-hazard-risk investigations and methods to augment ecological quality using geoinformatics and machine learning techniques. He is engaged with various research projects including state-of-the-art LTEO projects of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; NASA-ISRO SAR; GISAT; and Airborne Hyperspectral Sensing missions. Dr Kumar has published over 60 research articles in various journals and books of international and national repute. He is a member of various academic societies including IUCN-Commission on Ecosystem Management (South Asia), National Association of Geographers India, and Global Forest Biodiversity Initiatives, USA. Dr. Mohamed Latif Khan is a Professor of Forestry and Coordinator of Scientific & Industrial Research Cell and also Deputy Coordinator of Bioinformatics Centre at North Eastern Regional Institute of Science & Technology (Deemed University), NIRJULI, Arunachal Pradesh. He is a plant ecologist and conservation biologist, obtained his doctoral degree from North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. His research interests have gradually expanded from tree regeneration to the fields of biodiversity conservation and eco-restoration. Dr. Khan is presently engaged in the studies on conservation and regeneration of endangered and medicinal plant species, inventory and analyses of biodiversity of sacred groves, exploration of germplasm of bamboo and cane species. Dr. Khan is also trained to study the phylogeny and genetic diversity of plant species. He has also been trained at Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehra Dun for the application of remote sensing and GIS in biodiversity conservation. He also has research collaboration with Concordia University, Canada, Grand valley State University and Kansas University, USA. Through his research program, he has supervised twenty five undergraduate, five graduate and ten Ph. D. theses and currently he is supervising eight Ph.D. theses. He has contributed 103 peer-reviewed papers and 33 conference papers, invited presentations, and lectures. One book has also been co-edited by him. Dr. Khan is a recipient of prestigious Nanda Memorial Young Scientist Medal from the Indian Society for Tree Scientists for his outstanding research in the field of Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation. He is a recipient of DST-BOYSCAST and DBT-Overseas fellowships in thrust area 'Biodiversity Conservation' and worked as visiting faculty at University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA, and Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Xiangdong Lei is a professor of Forest management in the Institute of Forest Resource Information Techniques (IFRIT), Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF). His research interests cover forest growth yield and modeling, multiple-functional forest management, and forest inventory. He had been as the Chief Technical Advisor of multiple use forestry demonstration project fund by the APFNet. He published more than 130 research papers and book chapters. He is the PI of national key R&D project "Forest site quality evaluation and muti-functional and full cycle forest management ".