Kuppamuthu Dharmalingam obtained his Ph.D. from the Madurai Kamraj University, Tamil Nadu. He was the first to discover the induction of mutagenic DNA repair during the restriction of non-glycosylated T4 DNA in Escherichia coli, a gram negative bacterium. He is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India. Dr. Dharmalingam was the recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1992.

Asis Datta secured a Ph.D. from Kolkatta University in 1968. He has done pioneering work in the field of molecular biology. His research on Candida Albicans, a pathogenic yeast that causes candidiasis, an infection to humans, resulted in designing a drug to combat the disease. He made essential contributions in identifying and manipulating novel genes, which led to the production of transgenics of high societal value. Professor Datta was the Founder Director of the National Insitute of Plant Genome Research. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards like the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award in 1980; the TWAS award in 1996; Padma Shri in 1999, and Padma Bhushan in 2008.