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Dr. Nityananda Patnaik, a reputed Anthropologist was born in 1927 and educated in Calcutta University. He has many publications in the form of books and papers all related to various aspects of Social Anthropology to his credit. His very recent published books are 1. Sacred Complex of Orissa and 2. Anthropological Studies on Indian Societies. Some of his forthcoming books are 1. The Santal Medicine (The Santal Worldview and Indigenous Health Practices and Herbal Medicine), 2. Torch Bearers of Vedic Traditioins: Brahmin Sasan Villages in Orissa, 3. Forest Tribes of Orissa-Vo.III, The Juang of Kendujhar and 4. Forest Tribes of Orissa-Vol.IV, The Bhuinya of Kendujhar, 5. Agricultural Practices among Tribal Communities of Orissa. He has been one of the teachers in Post-Graduate Department of Anthropology, Utkal University. Thereafter, he joined National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) as director of Anthropology. During his tenure at the NIRD, he received a fellowship from the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, where he concentrated his efforts and brought out a publication namely, Cultural Tradition in Puri. After serving for about 13 years at the NIRD he came back to Orissa to work as the Director of Tribal and Harijan Research-cum-Training Institute, Government of Orissa. After his retirement from the Government service he established his own research institute namely, Social Science and Development Research Institute (SSADRI) at Bhubaneswar which is engaged in social service, tribal development and also in research studies.

Klaus Seeland is a reputed political scientist and sociologist who has been researching in South Asia on socio-cultural aspects of forests, comparative studies in resource management, perception and local knowledge for over twenty years now. Currently, he is Senior Lecturer at the Chair of Forest Policy and Forest Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and Reader in sociology at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

B.P. Choudhury was professor of botany at PG Department of Botany, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar.  In association with the research project, he gave guidance and provided laboratory facilities for the identification of plants.

A. Rath is an anthropologist who was mainly responsible for the socio-cultural survey among the Juang.  He is presently working in the interior of Orissa.

A. Biswal is a botanist who was extensively involved in identifying plants and their uses in field surveys. 

D.B. Giri is an anthropologist who assisted in observation, interviewing, statistics and the recording of case histories.