Dr. Vinita Gowda is a botanist with over 25 years of experience studying tropical plants and ecological interactions. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at IISER Bhopal, where her research team, the Tropical Ecology and Evolution lab, TrEE lab, focuses on diverse plant-centric research topics. Her key research themes include the evolutionary relationships among plants from the tropics and the Indian Himalayan temperate region and the evolution of floral and reproductive traits and historical hybridisation and introgression events. One of her major focus is on the plant order Zingiberales or the ginger group. Research from her team has shown that plant biodiversity in the northeast of India is strongly influenced by the Himalayan uplift and monsoonal changes, leading to high genetic introgression among young plant groups. Vinita is passionate about improving how botany is taught in schools and colleges and advocates establishing local herbaria and botanical gardens to promote awareness about native plant diversity and global biodiversity.