Indian epidemiologist Dr Amitav Banerjee, ranked among top 2% of scientists globally

Hyderabad: Dr Amitav Banerjee, former field epidemiologist in the Armed Forces, has been named among the top 2 per cent of scientists globally by Stanford University.

Dr Banerjee is currently serving as professor emeritus of community medicine at DY Patil Medical College in Pune. He has been included in the list for the second consecutive year, as a mark of his continuous work in the field of research.

As per the Elsevier Data Repository, the selection is based on the top 1,00,000 scientists by C-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2 per cent or above in the sub-field. The scientists are classified into 22 scientific fields and 174 sub-fields according to the standard Scientific-Metrix classification.

Dr Banerjee joined defence service in 1978

Dr Banerjee, born on August 12, 1954, in Dehradun in present-day Uttarakhand, completed an undergraduate medical degree from Government Medical College, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh in 1977 and joined the Armed Forces as a medical officer and ad-hoc anaesthesiologist in 1978 at the age of 24.

While in Army service, he completed his MD in preventive and social medicine from the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College in Pune in 1987. Dr Banerjee continued his service in the Indian Armed Forces as an epidemiologist.

In 1994, he pursued a fellowship in clinical epidemiology in King George Medical College, Lucknow under the International Clinical Epidemiological Network (INCLEN) and continued his association with INCLEN till 1999.

Dr Banerjee took voluntary retirement from the Armed Forces in 2005 and continues to serve as the Emeritus Professor at DY Patil Medical College, Pune.

Rewards and achievements

Dr Banerjee was awarded the Chief of Army Staff Gold Medal for his essay on the ‘Impact of Information Highway on Military Command Styles and Structures’ while serving at the Officers Training School. Following this, he was posted as a Reader at the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune in 2000.

“I headed the Mobile Epidemic Team at AFMC from 2000 to 2004. During this period, he investigated a number of outbreaks in different parts of the country including insurgency areas and different terrains such as outbreaks of salmonella food poisoning, pneumococcal pneumonia, viral hepatitis B, typhoid fever, rubella in adolescents, adults and malaria,” Dr Banerjee said.

He was awarded the Director General of Armed Forces Medical Services silver medal in 2002 for his work in tribal malaria and hepatitis B.

International recognitions

Besides being one of the most sought-after reviewers across the world, Dr Banerjee was awarded the Publons Peer Review Award in 2016 and 2017 as one of the top 1 per cent reviewers in medicine at the international level (ranked 68th in the world).

He has been awarded the Certificate of Reviewing and Elsevier Reviewer badge by the Editors of Vaccine, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Dr Banerjee has delivered several keynote addresses and acted as a panellist for summits, conferences and seminars, both national and international.

Columns, opinions and editorials

He has also written a number of expert views and columns in the National Herald and other platforms including ‘Expert View: The Pandemic of Panic caused by overwhelming numbers, not lethality of the virus’; ‘Expert View: The art of war against the wily Coronavirus’; ‘Public Health: Doctors losing out to pharma & tech companies’; ‘Global response to COVID-19 pandemic has been amateurish; complex issues need many thinking hats’; ‘Second thoughts on mass vaccination’; ‘The science and the art of living with Covid-19’; ‘Mysterious ‘fever’ a bigger challenge than Covid’; ‘Good science also needs a thriving democracy’; ‘Conflicting claims on efficacy of masks’; and ‘The parable of King Corona has lessons for the pandemic’s progress’.

The list of papers published by Dr Banerjee, his interview columns, editorials on COVID-19 and panel discussions are available here.