EIGHT academics and two universities were feted as the country’s most promising and influential in research at the Malaysia Research Star Awards (MRSA) 2019 in Putrajaya last week.
Organised for the fifth time by global innovation insights and analytics provider Clarivate Analytics and the Education Ministry (MoE), the awards recognised the most outstanding researchers coming from a variety of disciplines, including engineering, information and communication technology, clinical and health sciences, natural sciences and social sciences.
Professor Datuk Dr Abdul Wahab Mohammad of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia clinched the “Hot Review Paper” award for his engineering research.
According to the Web of Science Group, a Clarivate Analytics company, a “hot review paper” is defined as “a paper published in the past two years that received a number of citations in the most recent two-month period that places it in the top 0.1 per cent of papers in the same field”.
Seven researchers won the Research and Innovation Excellence award.
Universiti Malaya (research university) and Universiti Malaysia Pahang (non-research university) received the Research and Innovation Excellence award under the university category.
Award recipients were nominated based on metrics, such as the number papers published in the Web of Science, overall category normalised citation impact 1 (CNCI) and industry collaboration and patent-based metrics (number of patents and inventions, and patent strength score) derived from Derwent Innovation, a leading patent research platform of Clarivate Analytics.
Clarivate Analytics vice-president and head of Australasia and Southeast Asia Jeroen Prinsen said: “We are honoured to partner with MoE for the fifth consecutive year to recognise the country’s outstanding researchers.
“We have been working closely with Malaysian institutions to support and drive research excellence, and we look forward to continuing the longstanding partnership.
“By accelerating the pace of innovation, economic growth will be positively impacted.”
On a related note, 15 researchers from Malaysia earned the distinction of being among the world’s most influential 4,000+ scientists as determined by peers.
They were named by Clarivate Analytics as “2018 Highly Cited Researchers” for having published the greatest number of articles ranking among the top one per cent worldwide by citation in their respective fields in each paper’s year of publication.
Present at the ceremony was ministry secretary-general Datuk Dr Mohd Gazali Abas and director-general Datin Paduka Dr Siti Hamisah Tapsir.