Dr. Sundaravelpandian Kalaipandian obtained his BSc (Agriculture) and MSc (Plant Breeding and Genetics) from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. He worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute in India, and then went to undertake his PhD in Biotechnology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from Academia Sinica, and he later obtained a postdoctoral position to work at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and moved to Australia. He worked for The University of Adelaide and Biosecurity Queensland, after which he became a Research Fellow at The University of Queensland.