Dr. Purabi Saikia is an Associate Professor of Botany at Banaras Hindu University, India. She is a forest ecologist obtained her Ph.D. in Forestry from the North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, India. She is the recipient of the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar: Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar 2024 in Environmental Sciences from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and Assam Saurabh Award 2024 (the 2nd highest Civilian award) of the Govt. of Assam. She published ~80 research articles in several high-impact journals including three in Nature and two in PNAS.