Dr. Golam Jalal Ahammed is an Associate Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China. Dr. Ahammed received his Ph.D. in Olericulture and completed two consecutive postdoctoral programs at the Institute of Pesticide and Environmental Toxicology and the Institute of Crop Science at Zhejiang University. His primary research interests include stress physiology of vegetable crops, phytohormones, biological control of plant diseases, and environmental pollution. Dr. Ahammed has authored over 170 peer-reviewed papers in internationally reputed journals. He serves as an Associate Editor for AoB Plants, BMC Plant Biology and the Journal of Plant Growth Regulation. He has been recognized among the top 2% of scientists worldwide for the last four consecutive years by Stanford University, as published by Elsevier. Dr. Ahammed has also been recognized on the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2023 list by Clarivate.

Dr. Jie Zhou is a Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He received a Ph.D. in Vegetable Science from Zhejiang University in 2013 under a joint doctoral program with the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Purdue University, USA.  Afterward, he started his academic career as a lecturer at Zhejiang University and became a full professor in 2018.  His fields of specialization include protein modification and degradation in horticultural plant tolerance to stresses, phytomelatonin in plant response to abiotic stress, and autophagy in plant growth, development and regulation. Prof. Zhou is one of the leading young scholars in the area of vegetable science in China. He was awarded many honors such as National Outstanding Youth Scholar. He has been serving as Associate Editor for several domestic and international journals including Plant Stress. Dr. Zhou authored over 100 peer-reviewed papers in internationally reputed journals.