Title of the Talk: Cassava Biorefinery: Avenues for biobased products including biofuels and chemicals from wastes

Prof. Sivakumar Uthandi, has contributed 34 years of service, which includes 4 years at the Tamil Nadu State Government and 30 years at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University at various levels from Assistant Professor to Dean (Post Graduate Studies), TNAU, Coimbatore. He had his graduation, post graduation and Doctorate from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and obtained his post-doctoral training at the University of Florida USA, the University of Warwick UK, Borskeva Institute of Catalysis Russia, and Wageningen University, The Netherlands. During his stay in the USA, he was recognized as Visiting Associate Professor. Besides, he has also visited Sri Lanka, Laos PDR, and Thailand for various academic activities. He is also holding the honorary position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan since 2019. He is known for reporting first archaeal laccase, the first report on yeast association in root nodule of legumes, a novel EnZolv process for biomass conversion technology. In his continued efforts, he has perfected the technology for bacterial cellulose synthesis, biodiesel production from sago wastewater with simultaneous decontamination of cyanide & other organic pollutants using oleaginous yeast. He is also focusing on research relating to the plant microbiome and their metabolites involvement in plant disease and pest control, drought and saline-sodic remediation. He has contributed a lot on biocatalysts mediated biomass conversion, more particularly, lignin biotransformation leading to lignin derived renewable aromatics. So far, he has published 171 peer-reviewed research papers including 4 patents (1-US, 3-Indian). He is one of the editors of Spinger Nature’s Indian Journal of Microbiology. To his laurel, he has mobilized funds to the tune of INR 1271 lakhs and offered 35 fellowships to students which include 21 Masters, 6 Doctoral candidates and 8 PDFs..lakhs through various funding agencies ICAR, DBT, DST, Indo-Russia, Indo-US, SERB and MHRD-FAST. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Biology, London, Academy of Microbiological Sciences, India, and received 4 international 13 national and 9 state awards.