The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) is an international non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics have over 2 billion people, and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT is headquartered in Patancheru, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, with two regional hubs and six country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. About ICRISAT: www.icrisat.org ; For ICRISAT’s scientific information see: http://EXPLOREit.icrisat.org

CGIAR is a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future. Its science is carried out by 15 research centres in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations. www.cgiar.org

Dr. Rajeev K Varshney is Global Research Program Director, Genetic Gains and Director, Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology (CEGSB) at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), India. He is recognized as a leader in applied genomics, genomics-assisted breeding and translational genomics for agriculture. He specializes in Applied Genomics, Molecular Breeding, Crop Biotechnology & Capacity Building. He has genome sequences of 9 crops including pigeonpea, chickpea, peanut and pearl millet and several molecular breeding products in chickpea, peanut and pigeonpea to his credit. Rajeev has won the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize – Biological Sciences, the most coveted and prestigious award from Government of India. He is also recipient of several prestigious awards including Qilu Friendship Award from Shandong Province of Republic of China, Research Excellence India Citation Award 2015 by Thomson Reuters; JC Bose Fellowship for outstanding performance from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India; Certificate and Honour for Outstanding Science Contribution- 2018 by Uttar Pradesh Government (honored by His Excellency, Governor and Hon’ble Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh, India); The Illumina Agricultural Greater Good Initiative Award by Illumina Inc. USA, NASI-Scopus Young Scientist Award, Plaque/Certificate of Appreciation from Department of Agriculture– Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR)- the Philippines, Nepal Agricultural Research Council- Nepal, Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences-Vietnam, United Arab of Emirates University-UAE.

Rajeev, a Highly Cited Researcher for 5 years (2014-2018) in a row as per Thomson Reuters (Clarivate Analytics), has published >400 publications including 10 publications in Nature journals. Based on these publications, he has H-Index of 83 with > 29000 citations including >1000 citations each for three papers (as of March 2019). He is an elected Fellow of Leopoldina- German National Academy of Sciences, American Association of Advancement in Sciences (USA), The World Academy of Sciences, Crop Sciences Society of America, American Society of Agronomy and all 4 leading science academies of India: Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, The National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In addition, he is also fellow of AP Akademi of Sciences and Telangana State Akademi of Sciences). He is also a recipient of Young Scientist awards from many of the above-mentioned academies.

Ms. Anu Chitikineni is Senior Manager at Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology (CEGSB) at ICRISAT, Hyderabad (India). In addition to coordinating next-generation sequencing (NGS) and high-throughput genotyping at ICRISAT, she is managing operational activities in CEGSB as well as Critical Focus Area- Molecular Breeding of ICRISAT in Asia, West & Central Africa and Eastern & Southern Africa.  Before joining ICRISAT in 2012, she worked for about 8 years at leading research institutes like Center for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB), Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Contract Research Service (CRS) industry like Vimta Labs in Hyderabad, India.  She has a research interest in the area of next-generation genomics in crops and microbes based on NGS and high-throughput genotyping activities. She is a co-author in several research papers published in high impact journals like Nature Biotech, Nature Genetics, Nature Communications and others with >20 publications to her credit. She has organized several training courses and capacity building activities for next-generation scientists and students from national and international partner organizations. She has successfully organized several international conferences including Symposium on Advanced Genomics & Breeding Technologies for Accelerating Genetic Gains, First International Workshop on Systems Biology, VI NGGIBCI, InterDrought-V, NGGIBCI-V and many others.

Mr. Nilesh Mishra is ICT4D practitioner with 9+ years of experience. He specializes in ICT's for Agriculture development, communications, capacity building & training. His current engagement at ICRISAT as Senior Scientific Officer – ICT, focuses on Communications, Knowledge and Information sharing using digital platforms and tools. He has the onus of managing different websites, social media platforms, blogs and other communications tools for effective knowledge sharing. Nilesh was actively engaged in planning, execution and delivery of First Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) on agriculture in India delivered by One Agriculture-One Science Consortium led by ICRISAT in collaboration with several land grant state universities, USA and state agriculture universities from India with MOOC Technology partner IIT, Bombay. Before joining ICRISAT in 2014, he worked with Infronics Systems Limited, where he was actively engaged in training and capacity building of State Agriculture Officer and other Extension Professionals on using ICT tools and platforms and have trained more than 300 officials. He has trained officials from NPPC, Bhutan and Coconut Research Institute Sri Lanka (under FAO Funded Project) on use of e-Pest Surveillance Solutions (Early forewarning System for Pest & Disease monitoring in the agricultural field).