Dr. G S Kocher is an academician and researcher with more than 32 years of experience in Microbiology research and development. Presently, he is working as Principal Microbiologist-cum-Head at Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, Punjab. He has received various awards like Young Scientist Award in Environment Microbiology, Applied fermentation excellence award-2021, Distinguished Professor Award-2021, HTHS Gold medal award-2020, PAU's Merit and Plaque for outstanding scientist-2018 and many more. He has also won USDA-ICAR Bourlaug fellowship USA-2006 and International training in Biotechnology-2010.  He has been selected as expert panelist (alcoholic beverages) of FSSAI, GOI from 2023 to 2026. He has guided 24 MSc and 8 PhD students. He has handled ten competitive research projects, published more than 100 original research papers in various national and international journals and has two Indian patents to his credit.