currently working as a Senior Research Scientist at the
National Center for Natural Products Research
(NCNPR), School of Pharmacy. She has developed
and published micropropagation protocols for several
highly valuable medicinal plants. For last 10 years Dr.
Lata has been working on screening, micropropaga-
tion, conservation and multiplication of different vari-
eties of Cannabis sativa. She has more than 60
publications and an edited book entitled
“Biotechnology for Medicinal Plants–
Micropropagation and Improvement, Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg”to her credit.Mahmoud A. ElSohly is Research Professor at the
National Center for Natural Products Research, and
Professor of Pharmaceutics in the Department of
Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, School of
Pharmacy, the University of Mississippi, MS, USA
(1984–present). He is the Project Director, National
Institute on Drug Abuse Marijuana Project at the
University of Mississippi (1981–present). He is
President and Director of ElSohly Laboratories
Incorporated, Oxford, MS, USA, a small company
providing precision analytical testing and manufactur-
ing services for the drug testing industry since 1985.
He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Pharmacy
(Pharmacognosy) from the University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA in 1975. Dr. ElSohly holds more
than 30 patents dealing with the processing, testing,
and detection of drugs of abuse along with other
patents dealing with biologically active natural prod-
ucts. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed schol-
arly articles published in top-tier international journals.
He is a member of 14 scholarly scientific societies and
was recognized by“The Scientist” (April 17, 1995)
and “ScienceWatch” (January 1995) as the second
most cited author in forensic sciences in the world for
the period 1981–1993.xvi About the Editors