Prof. Gaurav Mudgal is an interdisciplinary academician and scientist with 19 years of experience, whose expertise spans plant biotechnology, molecular biosciences, Coronavirology, and biodiversity research. After earning his B.Tech in Biotechnology from Allahabad and M.Tech in Biotechnology from VIT-Vellore, he pursued groundbreaking research with elite teams at the headquarters’ workstation of CGIAR-ICRISAT, Hyderabad, working as a scientific officer in the nationally recruited cadre on plant genetic engineering and developing transgenic food crop lines. Later, he secured the highly competitive La Caixa Fellowship to undertake his doctoral research in the CSIC-reputed institute, the National Center of Biotechnology, Spain, where he explored coronavirus-host interactions and published impactful studies in journals such as Nature Scientific Reports, PLOS Pathogens, STOTEN, PCTOC, and Virus Research. He is also in the editorial boards of many leading journals such as Discover Applied Sciences, Frontiers Genetics to name a few. On returning to India, Prof. Mudgal expanded his academic leadership across multiple institutions before joining Chandigarh University in 2018. He’s since established a curiosity-driven biotechnology facility focused on neglected and resilient life forms like like the tardigrades, snake plants, agaves, and spurges and their microbial interactions, finding as well many translational research lines towards improving food crop productivity, pollutant biorem