Prof. Sivakumar Uthandi is a Professor and Head at the Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Coimbatore. He has contributed 32 years of service at various levels from Assistant Professor to Dean (Post Graduate Studies). He had his 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. He was recognized as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Florida, USA. He is also holding the honorary position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan since 2019 to till-date (2024). 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. 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) and 7 books. To his laurel, he has mobilized funds to the tune of INR 1171 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 the Editor of Springe Nature’s Indian Journal Microbiology for the past 3 years.