Biography

Dr. Vishal Sharma is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Forensic Science & Criminology (IFSC), Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He served as the Chair of IFSC at P.U. from December 2020 to 2023. He was placed three times in “Top 2% of Researchers in the World” in single year impact (2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023) published by Stanford University, USA, and Elsevier in Oct 2021, Nov 2022, Nov 2023 and Oct 2024 respectively. He leads research groups in Forensic Research and Material Science Research at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and has over 20 years of teaching and research experience. His current research interest is in Vibrational Spectroscopy, Chemometrics, Machine learning, Questioned documents, fingermark sensing, and synthesis and characterization of hydrogel-based natural materials for sensing, drug delivery, environmental forensics, and various other applications. He has been granted 04 patents with the Controller General of Patents, Design & Trade Marks, India. He is the author of over 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers (all are Scopus and Web of Science indexed) with an h index of 39, i10 index of 95, and over 5800 citations. He has 08 books as Editor (Springer Nature, Elsevier, and RSC) and over 25 book chapters to his credit. He is on the editorial board of Forensic Science International: Reports and Forensic Science International: Synergy journals of Elsevier. He has been conferred with the best researcher award by Panjab University under the Promotion of University Research and Scientific Excellence (PURSE), DST Govt. of India grant, and Dr. P.D. Sethi National Award. He received the India Top Cited Author Award 2019 by IOP Publishing, United Kingdom (UK) as an author of one of the top 1% of the most-cited papers from India in the field of Materials (nanophosphor material developed for fingermark sensing), published across the whole IOP Publishing portfolio in the past three years (2016 to 2018), using citations recorded in Web of Science. He was the recipient of the DAE Young Scientist Research Award in 2011. He has guided 08 PhD, 03 post-doctorate, and 60 Master theses.