Harnessing Industrial Benefits through Fruit Waste Utilization

Dr. Deepika Kathuria is Assistant Professor at Chandigarh College of Pharmacy, Chandigarh Group of Colleges, Landran, Punjab (140307), India. She completed her master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and earned her doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), Mohali, India. Dr. Kathuria has published over 35 peer-reviewed research papers in reputed international journals. She has received several prestigious honours, fellowships, and awards, including the INSPIRE Fellowship (JRF and SRF) from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellowship, the Newton-Bhabha Placement, and the DST Exchange Programme. Her research interests encompass Organic Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Natural Products, and Computer-Aided Drug Design. She also has significant experience in the development of sensors for pesticide detection. Additionally, Dr. Kathuria has edited five scholarly books published by renowned international publishers, including CRC Press, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Elsevier.

Dr. Garima Bhardwaj is an independent researcher. She earned her PhD in Organic Chemistry from SLIET Longowal, Punjab. The topic of her PhD research was the utilization of oleo-chemical industry by-products for bio-surfactant synthesis. She has published her PhD work in various reputed international journals. After her PhD she joined Defence Institute of High-Altitude Research (DIHAR), Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) as Research Associate in the Phytochemistry division. During her work period in DIHAR, DRDO, she got an opportunity to work on the nutritional profiling of high-altitude vegetables and medicinal plants where she developed her interest in Phytochemistry. She has published over 32 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters in reputed international/national journals and books. She also published three edited books with distinguished publishers CRC Press, Royal Society of Chemistry, and Wiley. She has received research fellowships from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Ministry of Defence, DRDO, India, for her doctoral and postdoctoral research, respectively. She does research in Organic Chemistry, Bio-Surfactant Synthesis, Natural Products Chemistry, and Phytochemistry. Her PhD research activities focused on the isolation and characterization of novel strains to produce bio-surfactants and their purification and structural elucidation using modern chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. In her postdoctoral research, she worked on the extraction and purification of bioactive compounds from high-altitude regions and their qualitative and quantitative analysis. She is currently working on the natural product chemistry of the medicinal plants.

Dr. Ajay Sharma is a Natural Product Chemist with a strong background in Organic Chemistry, Phytochemistry, Biochemistry, and Ethnobotany. He completed his B.Sc. Medical from Govt. College Hoshiarpur (affiliated with Panjab University, Chandigarh), his master’s degree in Organic Chemistry (Natural Products) from Punjab Agriculture University Ludhiana, and his PhD (Organic Chemistry – Natural Product) from SLIET (Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering & Technology, Deemed University), Punjab. Currently, Dr. Sharma is serving as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Biomolecular Science, University of Mississippi (April 2024 to present). Prior to this, he worked as Senior Executive for Food Adulteration at the Nestlé Food Safety Institute (NFSI) at the Nestlé R&D Centre, Manesar, Gurgaon, India (July 2022 to March 2024). Before joining Nestlé, Dr. Sharma was Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry, UCRD, Chandigarh University, Mohali, India (August 2018 to July 2022). He has various honors/fellowship/awards to his credit, i.e. Role of Honor from PAU Ludhiana (2011), Merit-Cum-Topper Scholarship during M.Sc. (PAU Ludhiana) (2009–10), MHRD Fellowship Award for Ph.D (2012), Award of INSPIRE Fellowship (JRF, 2013) from DST, Award of INSPIRE Fellowship (SRF, 2015) from DST, First Prize in Poster Award at National Conference (NICS-2016) and Best Poster Award at National Conference (TSFS-2016), Award of Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of Mississippi, Oxford, USA (April 2024), Third Prize in Poster Competition, at the School of Pharmacy Research Day, University of Mississippi (Spring 2025). He does research in Organic Chemistry, Natural Products Chemistry, Phytochemistry, and Food Chemistry. His research activities have focused on the isolation and characterization of bioactive extracts from traditional medicinal plants and the evaluation of their biological potential. Dr. Sharma is highly skilled in the characterization and identification of compounds using a wide range of analytical techniques, including mass spectrometry, LC–MS/MS, GC–MS/MS, GC-GC-TOF, NMR, RP-HPLC-DAD, SEC-MALS, and HPTLC. He has extensive experience in method development and validation for the identification of small molecules, contaminants, adulterants, and plant toxins. Dr. Sharma published 68 articles (research articles – 24, review articles – 23, book chapters – 21) in reputed international journals and edited books. He also published seven edited books with distinguished publishers such as CRC Press, Royal Society of Chemistry, Springer Nature, Wiley, and Elsevier. Currently, Dr. Sharma’s research focuses on evaluating various applications of hydroxyl radical protein footprinting using the newly developed Flash Oxidation (Fox) Protein Footprinting System and LC–MS/MS for protein structural characterization.