New Delhi, July 2: The India-headquartered Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA) has selected 15 early-career researchers from leading universities and research institutions across the world for its Global Biofuel Champion Fellowship (GBCF). The fellows will each receive a US$15,000 research grant and will work with the Alliance over the next two years to advance research, knowledge exchange and international collaboration in sustainable biofuels.
The Global Biofuel Champion Fellowship was conceived to strengthen international cooperation by connecting academic research with policy and industry. The programme seeks to facilitate collaboration across countries, support applied research, promote knowledge exchange and help translate scientific innovation into scalable bioenergy solutions.
In a specialized keynote address, HE Dr Neeraj Mittal, Secretary of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG), India, and Interim Director General of the GBA, underscored that the transition to a sustainable future has evolved into an immediate operational imperative. Delivering his address virtually, Dr. Mittal presented India’s recent bioenergy trajectory as an open-source blueprint for the international community, demonstrating how decisive policy frameworks yield significant economic and environmental dividends.
The inaugural cohort of the Global Biofuel Champion Fellowship (GBCF) comprises Shalom Chilaru Iboh (University of Florida, United States), Manikandan Pandiyan (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States), Dwica Wulandari (University of Manchester, United Kingdom), João Alexandre Lopes de Carvalho (Nuffield, Brazil), Siti Nurjanah Firmansyah (University of British Columbia, Canada), Sekpey Nicholas Selady (Alliance for Empowering Rural Communities, Ghana), Anthony Ochieng Odhiambo (Panorama Insights Africa, Kenya), Harshita (Monash University, Australia), Md. Sanowar Hossain (University of Alberta, Canada), Seyed Mohsen Hosseini Ardali (Polytechnique Montréal, Canada), Shaivya Anand (University of Alberta, Canada), Ruchi Agrawal (The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India), Bruno Alves Pereira (Fundação Dom Cabral, Brazil), Abhisek Sahoo (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India), and Aina Afiqah (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia).