Prof Anil Kumar Tripathi is presently the Director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali. Earlier, he was a Senior Professor of Biotechnology and the Director of the Institute of Science (2019-2024) at Banaras Hindu University (BHU). He was also the Director of the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CSIR-CIMAP) at Lucknow during 2014-2019. During his tenure as Director, CSIR-CIMAP, he laid the foundation of CSIR Aroma Mission as its first Mission Director, which is one of the important success stories of CSIR in recent times which has empowered thousands of farmers by adoption of improved varieties of aromatic crops and processing technologies. During his tenure at BHU, he was instrumental in the establishment of a Sophisticated Analytical Technical Help Institute (SATHI) at BHU which provides high-end analytical support for both academia and industry. He also established a Bioincubator for Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST) at BHU to provide an enabling ecosystem for promoting Biotech-based innovation. At CSIR-CIMAP, he led the development and commercialization of a very successful anti-diabetic herbal formulation which was selected for the Technology Award of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India.   

Prof Tripathi has contributed extensively to science education, research and administration in various teaching, scientific and administrative roles for nearly 4 decades. After doing his University Education (B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D.) from Banaras Hindu University, he did his post-doctoral research at the Institute of Genetics, University of Bayreuth, Germany.  His research interests focus on Bacterial Genetics, Functional Genomics, Systems biology, Synthetic Biology and Plant Microbe Interaction. He has published about 100 peer-reviewed research articles and supervised 24 Ph. D. theses. He is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi; Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Bengaluru; National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), Prayagraj and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), New Delhi. He was also awarded the prestigious J C Bose National Fellowship of SERB (presently ANRF). Currently, he is the Vice-President (Science Promotion) of Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and a Member of the Council of Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru.