46 Panjab University teachers make it to list of 2% world’s top scientists

As many as 46 faculty members of the Panjab University, Chandigarh, have been named in the list of top 2 per cent scientists of the world released today. The subject-wise bibliometric analysis was conducted by a team of scientists from the Stanford University and the Elsevier BV-A, a leading science publisher.

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The scientists have been classified into 22 fields and 174 sub-fields according to the standard science-metrix classification. Career-long data has been updated to end of 2023, while the single recent year data pertains to citations received in 2023. The selection is based on the top 1 lakh scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2 per cent or above in the sub-field. The c-score focuses on impact (citations) rather than productivity (number of publications) and it also incorporates information on co-authorship and author positions (single, first, last author).

As many as 24 faculty members featured in the ‘author career-long list’— Kewal Krishan, Harsh Nayyar, Harminder Pal Singh, Navneet Kaur, SK Tripathi, MM Aggarwal, L Kumar, Sushil Kumar Kansal, Daizy R Batish, Santosh Kumar Upadhyay, Sonal Singhal, Rohit Sharma, SK Tomar, Vishal Gupta, Jaswinder Singh, I Aggarwal, SK Kulkarni, Ashish Dhir, Bhupinder Singh, Anil Kumar, Kanwaljit Chopra, Indu Pal Kaur, VR Sinha and OP Katare.

In the single-year data list, 23 faculty members from the PU featured — SK Mehta, Suman Mor, Gargi Ghoshal, Navpreet Kaur, Shweta Sharma, Sanjay Chhibber, Rajat Sandhir, Vishal Sharma, Ravneet Kaur, Neera Garg, Sanjeev Gautam, Mamta Juneja, Prince Sharma, Monika Nehra, Subhash Chander, Chetan Sharma, Gurjaspreet Singh, Gaurav Verma, Subash C Sahoo, Anurag Kuhad, Gajanand Sharma, Renu Chadha and Anil Kumar Singla.

PU’s Anthropology Department professor Kewal Krishan, who featured in the career-long list, is a forensic scientist having 362 publications with 88,000 citations. He has contributed to the development of forensic anthropology in India and has devised various methods of criminal investigation that are widely used in solving hardcore criminal cases. When asked regarding his research which made him part of the coveted list, Dr Krishan said he specialises in human body, morphology and human skeleton and conducted research on fingerprints, footprints, artificial intelligence and its forensic applications, human teeth, etc. “It is a proud moment for all of us. I am grateful to the university for providing me with the opportunity to focus on my research,” he added.

The Vice Chancellor, Renu Vig, congratulated all faculty members on this achievement and encouraged all teachers of the university to publish quality papers in international journals of repute, getting grants for research projects and file patents and copyrights.