Conservation of Biodiversity in the North Eastern States of India

This volume presents part of the proceedings of NERC 2022, with an emphasis on conservation of bio-diversity in North-east India. This is a highly challenging and involved topic due to regionally diverse physiographic, geographical and eco-climatic conditions. Henceforth, systemic and holistic frameworks are required to disseminate upon the potential of science and technology for the conservation of the region’s bio-diversity. Notable among these frameworks refers to plant, microbial and animal bio-diversity conservation, value-added product development and sharing the benefits of such research for the perspective of bio-prospects, analysing critical environmental and climatic factors and their sensitivity upon urbanization strategies. Tools that are to be deployed for such insights involve plant, animal, and microbial bioscience and biotechnology, generalized rules for product design and development and survey based strategies. Addressing relevant competent methodologies and generic pedagogies, this volume on the bio-diversity conservation in North-eastern states of India aims to demonstrate the potential of pragmatic strategies that can be applied for the bio-diversity conservation in any region of world. Thereby, opportunities for nature linked livelihood security can be sought for the long term wellbeing of the humankind and ecology. 

Prof. Ramagopal V. S. Uppaluri

Prof. Ramagopal Uppaluri holds B.Tech. (Chemical Engineering) from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam; M.Tech. (Chemical Engineering) from IIT Kanpur and Ph.D. (Process Integration) from the University of Manchester, England. After a brief tenure of postdoctoral fellowship at Robert Gordon University, Scotland, he joined IIT Guwahati and eventually became one of the youngest Professor and Professor (Higher Academic Grade) of IIT Guwahati.  Till date, Prof. Uppaluri has guided 15 Ph.D. students at IIT Guwahati. Presently, he is supervising 20 Ph.D. students in diverse fields of rural food processing, polymer science and technology, solar energy applications, machine learning, bio-fertilizers, food product design and development etc. He has published 116 international journal publications in diversified areas of chemical engineering and science. He has been awarded/filed 6 Indian patents in the field of enhanced oil recovery, noble metal composite membrane fabrication and nano-clustered palladium catalyst fabrication.  He also completed several funded projects from DBT, CSIR, DST, DRDL, OIL and IOCL. His extra-curricular interests are in the field of Vedanta & Science and Consciousness Studies.

Dr. Latha Rangan

Prof. Latha Rangan holds M.Sc. (Plant Science) and Ph.D. (Plant Science, 2001) from University of Madras, India. After a brief tenure of post-doctoral research on rice biotechnology at De Montfort University, U.K., Prof. Rangan joined IIT Guwahati in 2004. Presently, Prof. Rangan is a senior professor (equivalent to higher academic grade) of Bio-sciences and Bio-engineering at IIT Guwahati. In the field of bio-diversity, she extensively focusses upon bio-resources of North-east India and through an integrative approach. Her research work enabled the exploration of newer research paradigms for in various aspects of bio-diversity and thereby foster sustainable agriculture strategies for the medicinal plants. Till date, the editor published over 100 articles in peer reviewed international journals, book chapters, conference proceedings and reviews. She also served as the Head of the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at IIT Guwahati and received substantial funding from various funding agencies including the DBT. She is an Elected Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India and recipient of prestigious awards including Dr. P. Sheel Memorial Lecture (Young Women Scientist) Award from the National Academy of Sciences, Prof Hiralal Chakravarty Award of Indian Science Congress, Women Scientist Award of Biotech Research Society of India, Young Scientist Award of Society for Chemist and Biologist and Dr J N Baruah Science Award for her significant contributions in the area of Plant Science.