Dr. Ranjana Gautam is a plant molecular biologist and at present working as Assistant Professor in Department of Life Sciences, C.S.J.M. University. She has completed her post-graduation from Banaras Hindu University (B.H.U.). She has completed her doctoral degree from University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana. After completing her PhD, she has joined as research associate in Plant Virology Lab at CSIR-IHBT, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. She has expertise on stress biology of plants, gene expression analysis, plant physiology and plant-pathogen interactions. She has successfully published research articles in peer reviewed journals and book chapters like Nature Scientific Reports, Environmental and experimental Botany, Functional and integrative genomics and many more. Her findings have shown the role of ALDH and molecular chaperones (DnaJ) in stress tolerance in crop systems. She has also worked on developing pollination control system using cysteine-cystatin combinations in Brassica for hybrid seed production. Her primary research interests include plant genetic manipulation and identifying good candidate gene for orchestrating stress responses. She is also interested in identifying as to how pathogens manipulate cellular, molecular and physiological processes to establish disease in plants.