Professor Arafat Abdel Hamed Abdel Latef is a professor of plant physiology at the Department of Botany and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, South Valley University, Egypt. He received his BSc in 1998, M.Sc. in 2003 and Ph.D. in 2005 from South Valley University, Egypt. Prof. Arafat has published more than 80 research/review articles in high-quality international and local journals. He has edited one book for CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC (published in July 2021) and one book for Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg (published in November 2022). He has also published 20 book chapters in international volumes including John Wiley and Sons Inc, Taylor & Francis Group, Academic Press (Elsevier) and Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg.

Prof. Arafat is the recipient of the ParOwn 1207 Post Doctor Fellowship 2007 granted by the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, which was carried out in the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China. He is serving as an editorial member for 15 reputed journals and a guest editor for four special issues in Plants-Basel (2), Frontiers in Plant Science (1) and Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany (1). Furthermore, he is an expert reviewer for 120 international journals. Recently, he received the Top Peer Reviewer Award 2019 Powered by Publons.

Prof. Arafat has received several awards such as the Egypt State Award for Excellence 2021, South Valley University Award for Excellence 2019 and South Valley University Award for Scientific Publication (2010-2022). Prof. Arafat is actively engaged in studying the physio-biochemical and molecular responses of different plants under environmental stresses and their tolerance strategies under these stressors.