Dr. Lew Christopher holds a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Biotechnology. He has more than 25 years of industrial and academic experience in the field of industrial biotechnology and bioprocessing of lignocellulosic biomass. He has worked as industrial research scientist and held faculty positions in departments of biotechnology, chemical and biological engineering, and environmental engineering in South Africa and USA. Currently he serves as Director of the Biorefining Research Institute leading an interdisciplinary team of faculty and researchers from several science and engineering departments at Lakehead University in Canada. His research mission is to add value to the global Bioeconomy by applying an integrated biorefinery approach to the development of renewable energy technologies. Dr. Christopher is a member of the editorial board of several international biotechnology journals, advisory boards, and professional societies. He has made over 400 scientific contributions to the field of Biomass Biorefining including 8 patents, 4 books, and over 50 invited lectures delivered in Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America.

Dr. Silvio Silvério da Silva is the Associate Professor and Head at Department of Biotechnology, Engineering School of Lorena, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. He completed his doctorate in Biochemical and Pharmaceutical Technology from the University of São Paulo (USP) and Gesellschaft Fuer Biotechnologishe Forshung (GBF), Germany in 1994. Prof. Silva offers the consulting services to various scientific journals, ad hoc institutions and biotechnological industries. He has published more than 150 papers in peer reviewed international journals and presented more than 455 papers in international conference proceedings. He has also 18 book chapters to his credit. He has edit 3 international books and recorded two patents on technological processes for xylitol production. Prof. Silva has guided, 04 post-doc, 11 doctoral students, 26 masters’ dissertations and 58 scientific initiation students in the area of Applied Microbiology, Biochemical Engineering and Biotechnology. He has successfully completed 19 research projects funded by Brazilian Government and private funding agencies, including International Cooperative Projects. He got recognized some important Awards on biotechnology field. His area of research is Micro-biotechnology harnessing since last 25 years specifically on the potential of lignocellulosic feedstock for the production of Xylitol and bioethanol. For the exchange of scientific knowledge on the various aspects of xylitol production, he has visited several international research institutions of several countries.

Prof. Qu graduated from Shandong University in 1974, and got his Ph.D. there in 1986. He became a research assistant in 1981, and became full professor in 1993 in Shandong University. During those years, he had been a visiting scholar in Osaka University, The University of Tokyo, Lund University and Kyoto University. His main research interest is biodegradation and bioconversion of lignocellulosics by microorganisms. With cooperation of his colleagues, more than 300 papers and 10 books were published in his research fields. He was elected as Vice President of Chinese Society for Microbiology in 2006 and Advisory Board Member of Asia Federation of Biotechnology in 2010.

Dr. Mario Kabbour , Argentine nationality, was born in 1982. He is a bio-process engineer and currently the general manager for two bio-fuel companies: International Biodiesel L.L.C in Oman and NAIZER General Biodiesel Sdn.Bhd in Malaysia. He has many published papers and books in the field of Bio-process Engineering and Green Engineering. He developed many new techniques for selective extraction for nature products using various techniques. He had been involved in the development, design, construction and operation of many bio-fuel projects. His areas of interest includes bio-fuel,chemical extraction and green technology

Prof. (Dr.) Yogender Kumar Yadav received his Ph.D. in Energy Studies from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and at present he is the Director General, Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Bio-Energy (an Autonomous Institution of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India), Kapurthala, Punjab (India). Prof. Yadav has been actively engaged in research, teaching, consultancy, administration and management in the field of renewable energy for the last more than two decades. He developed and taught renewable energy courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students at CCS Haryana Agricultural University Hisar (India) and established the Department of Energy at Tezpur University, Assam (India) offering postgraduate programme in Renewable Energy. During his career he has made significant contributions to the advancement of renewable energy technologies and has more than 100 research publications in the international/national journals of repute and conferences in addition to writing teaching text on Renewable Energy. Prof. Yadav has been the Project Coordinator of Haryana State for the Government of India sponsored project on Integrated Rural Energy Programme (IREP) for meeting out rural energy needs through optimum mix of conventional and renewable energy sources with special emphasis on biomass and bio-energy. He has completed several research projects including the ICAR All India Coordinated Research Project on Renewable Energy Sources as Principal Investigator. Prof. Yadav had been the Chairman, Energy Forum at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Associate Editor, Energy for Journal of Agricultural Engineering. Currently he serves on a large number of expert committees and national/international panels dealing with renewable energy. He Chaired the Technical Session of the World Renewable Energy Congress IV at Denver, USA and was the Member of International Steering Committee of World Renewable Energy Forum 2012. Presently, he is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biofuels and Bioenergy. Prof. Yadav is the recipient of Distinguished Service Award of Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers for ‘Energy in Agriculture’ and has been honoured with the prestigious ‘Excellence Award 2012 for Research and Innovation in recognition of his research in the field of Renewable Energy at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Recently, Prof. Yadav has been awarded the World Renewable Energy Pioneer Award (WREN Pioneer Award 2014) by the World Renewable Energy Council/ Network for his global contributions in the field of renewable energy and the award was conferred upon him at the World Renewable Energy Congress XIII during August 3-8, 2014 at Kingston University, London, United Kingdom.

Prof. Praveen Kumar Ramanujam is currently is working as Head of the Department in Department of Biotechnology, Arunai Engineering College, Tiruvannamalai, Tamilnadu, India. He has published 18 research papers in renowned journals and 1 book. He was the chair for 1st International Conference on Bioenergy, Environment and Sustainable Technologies (BEST2013) and organized various national level symposiums and conferences. He is also the chair for 2nd International Conference on Bioenergy, Environment and Sustainable Technologies (BEST2015) which is going to be held during 28-31 January 2015. He served as International Scientific Advisory Committee member in “The 2012 Asian Biohydrogen and Bioproducts Symposium (ABBS)” conducted by Chongqing University, on November 9-12, 2012 in Chongqing, China. He has visited various countries including USA, Australia, China, Italy & Bangladesh to attend various conferences. He has chaired sessions and delivered invited talks in various International conferences which include “World Renewable Energy Congress – Australia 2013” and “International Conference on Advances in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics organized by Dr. DY Patil University– ICABB2013”. He had done provisional registration for patent for his work on “Production of Paper from Algae”. He is a life member in various professional societies which includes Biotech Research Society of India (BRSI), Indian Institute of Chemical Engineering (IICHE), International Forum on Industrial Bioprocesses (IFIBiop), Biogas Forum of India (BigFin), Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE), Engineers Without Borders, India (EWBIndia).Currently he is serving as Management council member in Biotech Research Society of India

She obtained a Master on Environmental Science in 2005 by the Universidad Jaime I of Castellón. In 2009, she got her PhD with European Mention in Microbiology at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid with a thesis work entitled “Bioethanol production from wheat straw: strategies for process integration”. During her PhD studies she was visiting student at the Technical University of Denmark (Lyngby, Dinamarca) and at Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden) where she worked with xylose fermenting yeasts optimizing its utilization for bioethanol production as well as improving its tolerance to inhibitors by evolutionary engineering. After her PhD, she worked as a Postdoctoral project assistant for almost two years at CIEMAT in the Biofuels Unit. From March 2011 to February 2013 she worked as Postdoctoral Researcher in the Industrial Biotechnology Group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden where she evaluated and developed xylose fermenting yeast strains to further improve sugar consumption capacity, robustness and inhibitor tolerance. At Chalmers, she also supervised Master Thesis and gave lectures in PhD courses. She has been working in the bioethanol field since 2005. She has studied different configuration processes, optimized process conditions and done studies on yeast physiology, adaptation and propagation. She has participated in European and National R&D projects and she has presented the obtained results in International and National Conferences in different posters as well as oral presentations. Dr. Tomás-Pejó is co-author of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and co-inventor of 2 patents. She is part of the Editorial Advisory Board of the open access journal “Bioethanol” and acts as reviewer of international journals.