Shiburaj Sugathan currently works as Professor, Department of Botany, University of Kerala. Formerly heading the Department of Microbiology, Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute. Shiburaj does research in Plant microbe interactions, antimicrobial metabolites etc. Their current project is 'bacterial divisome protein inhibitors & biofilm breaking molecules' and 'bioprospecting of Native fungi and actinomycetes'.