Advanced Treatment Technologies for the Removal of Microplastics in Wastewater

Izharul Haq is an Assistant Professor at the Dr. B. Lal Institute of Biotechnology in Jaipur, India, where he specializes in environmental biotechnology, with a focus on waste management using microbial processes and evaluating the toxicity of pollutants. He completed his PhD in Microbiology at the CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, India, and later conducted postdoctoral research at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. Dr. Haq has authored 65 publications, holds an h-index of 20, and has over 1900 citations, reflecting his impactful contributions to the field of environmental microbiology and pollutant remediation.

Maulin P. Shah, currently a Deputy General Manager - Industrial Wastewater Research Lab, Division of Applied and Environmental Microbiology Lab at Enviro Technology Ltd., Ankleshwar, Gujarat, India, received his Ph.D. (2002-2005) in Environmental Microbiology from Sardar Patel University, Vallabh Vidyanagar, Gujarat. He served as an Assistant Professor at Godhra, Gujarat University in 2001. He is a Microbial Biotechnologist with diverse research interests. A group of research scholars is working under his guidance on the areas ranging from Applied Microbiology, Environmental Biotechnology, Bioremediation, and Industrial Liquid Waste Management to solid state fermentation. His primary interest is the environment, the quality of our living resources and the ways that bacteria can help to manage and degrade toxic waste and restore environmental health. Consequently, he is very interested in genetic adaptation processes in bacteria, the mechanisms by which they deal with toxic substances, how they react to pollution in general and how we can apply microbial processes in a useful way (like bacterial bioreporters). One of our major interests is to study how bacteria evolve and adapt to use organic pollutants as novel growth substrates. Bacteria with new degradation capabilities are often selected in polluted environments and have accumulated small (mutations) and large genetic changes (transpositions, recombination, and horizontally transferred elements). His work has been focused on assessing the impact of industrial pollution on microbial diversity of wastewater following cultivation dependant and cultivation independent analysis. His major work involves isolation, screening, identification, and genetic engineering of high impact of microbes for the degradation of hazardous materials. He has more than 200 research publications in highly reputed national and international journals. He directs the Research program at Enviro Technology Ltd., Ankleshwar. He has guided more than 100 postgraduate students in various disciplines of Life Science. He is an active Editorial Board Member in more than 150 highly reputed journals in the field of Environmental & Biological Sciences. He was Founder Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Environmental Bioremediation and Biodegradation (2012-2014), as well as Journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2012-2014). He is actively engaged as an Editorial Board Member in 32 journals of high repute (Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, RSC, Wiley, KeAi, De Gruyter). He is also a reviewer in various journals of national and international repute. He has edited more than 200 books in wastewater microbiology, environmental microbiology, bioremediation, hazardous waste treatment.