Vandana Vinayak is an assistant professor in the School of Applied Sciences, Dr. Hari Singh Gour Vishwavidhyalaya University, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, India. Her research focuses on diatom nanoengineering, sustainable algal technologies, and valorization. She has published more than 50 research articles, 20 review articles, 12 book chapters, and two published patents. Vinayak has won the Women Scientist Award and the Noel Gold Medal Award.

Richard Gordon involvement with diatoms goes back to 1970, when his capillarity model for their gliding motility was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. He later worked on a diffusion-limited aggregation model for diatom morphogenesis, which led to the first paper ever published on diatom nanotechnology in 1988. He organized the first workshop on diatom nanotech in 2003.