Outstanding research papers by GIK Faculty have received recognition from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) under the Outstanding Research Awards program. For the year 2017-18, along with receiving awards for Best Research Paper by the HEC, journal articles by Dr. Yousaf Ali, Dr. Muhammad Zahir Iqbal and Dr. Zahid Halim were published in high Impact Factor (IF) journals, including Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, CARBON and Information Sciences.
Getting a paper published in a renowned journal is an effective way to disseminate research findings that can have a significant impact. The following are details of the Best Research Papers published by the three authors in high Impact Factor journals in 2017-18:
Dr. Yousaf Ali, Assistant Professor (Department of Management Sciences), received the Best Research Award in the Management Science category for his paper entitled ‘Carbon, water and land use accounting: Consumption vs production perspectives’. He got his article published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews – the topmost journal in sustainable energy with an Impact Factor of 10.556 and ranked Gold by the Journal Quality Ranking System. In his paper, the author analyzed worldwide data from 1995 to 2009 on carbon, water and land footprints. Given two main ways of measuring environmental footprints, the author compared footprints measured using production-based methods with those measured using consumption-based methods. The findings revealed that developed countries have larger footprints than developing countries when examined from a consumption perspective and vice versa when analyzed from a production perspective.
Dr. Muhammad Zahir Iqbal, Assistant Professor (Faculty of Engineering Sciences), received his award in the Natural Sciences category. He shared this award with Ms. Salma Siddique (GC University, Lahore) and Mr. Zain-ul-Abideen (GIK Institute, Topi). His article ‘Ultraviolet-light-driven enhanced hysteresis effect in graphene-tungsten disulfide heterostructures’ was published in CARBON – one of the best journals in Engineering Sciences with an Impact Factor of 7.466 and ranked in the Q1 (topmost) category on both the Article Influence Score and Journal Impact Factor. Dr. Iqbal and his co-authors based their study on the discovery of 2D materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, and their exceptional properties that have shown prodigious advancement in the field of electronics. They demonstrated the integration of van der waal heterostructures and reported a large hysteresis effect by constructing graphene-tungsten disulfide heterostructure (GWH). The authors concluded that GWH architecture has potential non-volatile memory applications that can especially be used in the advancement of digital electronics technology.
Dr. Zahid Halim, Associate Professor (Faculty of Computer Science & Engineering), co-authored ‘Quantifying and optimizing visualization: An evolutionary computing-based approach’ with Dr. Tufail Muhammad (GIK Alumnus). They received the Best Research Paper award in the Computer Science/Engineering category and published their article in Information Sciences – one of the top three journals in engineering and computer science and ranked Gold by the Journal Quality Ranking System with an Impact Factor of 5.524. The authors focused their research on proposing visualization metrics to select the most suitable visualization technique to analyze datasets. They devised a general framework for quantifying and optimizing visualization layouts, proposing effectiveness, expressiveness, readability and interactivity as the four visualization metrics.