Dr. Sarat Kumar Das is a professor and head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India. Professor Das obtained his bachelor's in Civil Engineering from the College of Engineering and Technology (presently OUTR) Bhubaneswar, India, followed by his master's and Ph.D. in Geotechnical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), India. Supported by the Endeavor Research Fellowship of the Australian Government, he undertook his postdoctoral training at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. Professor Das has about 30 years of experience in the field of civil and geotechnical engineering in academia and industry. His research interests include geoenvironmental engineering, AI and optimization methods, and biogeotechnics. Dr. Krishna R. Reddy is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, director of Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory, and director of the Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. He received gold medals during B.E. in Civil Engineering at Osmania University and M.E. in Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. His teaching and research expertise includes civil and geotechnical infrastructure systems, water and environmental pollution remediation, waste management and recycling, and sustainable and resilient engineering. Dr. Reddy has received several awards, including ASCE Wesley W. Horner Award, ASTM Hogentogler Award, the UIC Distinguished Researcher Award, University of Illinois Scholar Award, and University of Illinois Award for Excellence in Teaching. Dr. Lohitkumar Nainegali is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad. He received his M.Tech. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. His research is mainly focused on the physical and numerical modeling of geotechnical systems, stability of geotechnical structures, soils dynamics and foundations, and valorization of industrial waste/utilization of mine overburden. He has received various research grants on similar research areas from the Department of Science and Technology, India and Coal India Limited, etc. and has conducted several consultancy projects. He has several publications in renowned international journals and conferences. He has mentored one Ph.D. and 07 M.Tech. scholars and is currently guiding four Ph.D. scholars. Dr. Surabhi Jain is currently pursuing postdoctoral research at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad. She was awarded the PECFAR award in 2022 and working in the collaboration with Technical University of Munich, Germany. She has completed one year of post-doctorate at Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Shantou, China. She received her Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. Her research work is in biogeotechnics, utilization of industrial waste in construction, and sustainable engineering. She is the first researcher who started working on valorizing industrial waste using biochemical processes. She has delivered various lectures on biogeotechnics and biocementation on different reputed platforms.
