Professor U. Sivakumar

Professor Sivakumar Uthandi is a Professor of Agricultural Microbiology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore, India; he received his basic, master’s, and doctorate degrees from TNAU and gained Post-Doctoral experience at the University of Florida, USA. He was Dean of School of Post Graduate Studies, TNAU, Coimbatore. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Florida, USA; and also visited Wageningen University, The Netherlands; BIC, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, and the University of Warwick, UK; AVRDC, Taiwan; and University of Jafna, Srilanka. He is now serving as Visiting Adjunct Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan. With 25 years of teaching and research experience, he has about 127 research articles and obtained several recognitions in his academic and professional career, including 9 awards, 3 fellowships, and 4 patents (One –US and 2-Indian).  He has authored more than 20 books, including edited and written and 15 book chapters. He is currently serving as a Chief Editor of 107 years old Madras Agricultural Journal. He is also known for several first reports such as archaeal laccase, root nodule associated endophytic yeast, microbiome of apoplast and guard cells, metabolites for plant signalling, etc. Recently he has been recognized as FRSB (Fellow of Royal Society of Biology). He has established international collaboration with the Universities of Warwick, University of Wageningen, University of Florida, University of Tokyo, and Boreskow Institute of Catalysis, Russia.  To his laurel, he has mobilized funds to a tune of INR 86.2 million through various funding agencies ICAR, DBT, DST, and MHRD-FAST and offered 22 fellowships to students, which include 17 Masters and 5 Doctoral candidates.