Plant Functional Traits: Linking Climate and Ecosystem Functioning

Dr. Kumar is a senior scientist working at Indian Council of Forestry Research & Education, Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Government of India. Kumar primarily works in the field of forestry, environment, climate change, and related interdisciplinary fields with wider applications of Information Technology, Remote Sensing and GIS tools and has a working experience of more than fifteen years. His research area includes testing and development of dynamic vegetation models for the climate change impact studies. He has initiated work on developing forest growth simulation model (ForestInfo) to study functional relationship of plants with the environment that could be used for climate change impact studies and has published high impact international papers on various themes of agriculture, forestry, environment, and climate change. He has successfully implemented more than twenty research projects funded by national and international agencies.

Prof. Dr. Rainer W. Bussmann is a vegetation ecologist and an ethnobotanist. He is Head and Full Professor at the Department of Ethnobotany, Institute of Botany, Ilia State University, Georgia. Before moving to Georgia, he was director of William L. Brown Center at Missouri Botanical Garden, USA. He held academic appointments as Associate Professor of Botany and Scientific Director of Harold Lyon Arboretum at University of Hawaii, USA and Assistant Professor at University of Bayreuth, Germany. He holds affiliate appointments and serves as external thesis advisor at universities worldwide. He has authored over 330 peer-reviewed papers, over 1200 peer-reviewed book chapters, and authored or edited 38 books. According to Stanford University, he is recognized among the 2% most influential scientists worldwide. He is past President of the Society for Economic Botany and has served as board/council member of the Botanical Society of America, and International Society of Ethnobiology.

Prof. Swenson is a world expert in the ecology and evolution of tree species. His work focuses on the functional and historical processes that determine the performance, distribution and dynamics of trees across space and time. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. He is currently the Gillen Director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center. He has published 2 books and over 160 peer reviewed papers including in journals such as Science, Nature and PNAS. Prof. Swenson has received multiple international awards including being named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics and a recipient of the Ebbe Nielsen Prize from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.