Dr. Sojib Zaman named 2% Top Scientist for fourth year running

For the fourth year in a row, Health Sciences professor Dr. Sojib Zaman has been honored with inclusion in Stanford/Elsevier’s 2% Top Scientist rankings.

The list provides a standardized way to recognize scientists who have made a significant impact on their respective fields. Throughout his career, Zaman has authored, co-authored or edited more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, with more than 100,000 career citations. In 2024, the papers he contributed to were cited by other writers almost 13,000 times and, in 2025, more than 16,000 times.

“I am truly honored to be recognized as a Top Scientist for the fourth consecutive year,” Zaman said. “It is a privilege to contribute to the scientific community, and this recognition motivates me to continue pushing boundaries and collaborating with others to make meaningful progress.”

Zaman, who has a doctorate in public health from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, has worked at JMU since 2023 and is a recipient of the 2025 Provost Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship.

His main teaching areas are infectious diseases, chronic diseases and disability, and statistical methods and research methodologies. While at JMU, his research has focused on chronic diseases, maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, mental health, and health-systems strengthening.

His 2% Top Scientist ranking and the growing number of citations each year are a testament to his vast catalog of research and its relevance to current health concerns around the world.

“I try to contribute to research in countries where I have gained knowledge or experience working with other researchers there,” Zaman said. His focuses have centered on his native Bangladesh as well as Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Tanzania, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

Among his various projects, Zaman has been conducting a series of feasibility studies, effectiveness studies, and clinical trials on how community health workers can use digital tools to tackle and manage chronic diseases.

“We have to somehow empower community health workers to do this work,” he said. “Once I have a health model or technology that works in a feasibility trial, it comes to my mind, ‘Hey, this is something I actually want to test further.’ I want to deliver this technology to the community health workers, and I want to know whether they are able to use it effectively.”

To do that, Zaman needs various collaborators in the U.S. and around the globe to help develop the health technology and implement it in developing countries.

He has been working with the Virginia Department of Health through a state-based program addressing stroke and cardiovascular health. As a faculty associate, Zaman is also working through JMU’s Institute for Innovation in Health and Human Services to evaluate how partner agencies across the commonwealth are implementing the program and to report their findings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This will help the VDH, CDC and IIHHS determine the program’s impact on public health.

Throughout his career, chronic health has been one of the main influences on public health that he’s encountered, and it has fueled his current, ongoing research in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

“It’s all about chronic disease,” he said. “Still we are losing our lives [to] stroke, [to] myocardial infarction, which is heart attack. We are losing lives [to] cancer and also lung diseases.

“Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and respiratory illnesses, are the leading causes of death and disability globally and in the United States, accounting for approximately 70-75% of all deaths. So still, I think this makes chronic-disease prevention and management one of the most critical areas of public health today.”

In the classroom

In Health Research Methods (HTH 408), Zaman works closely with four groups of five students as they choose a research topic for the semester. The project wraps up with a poster presentation at JMU’s Health Sciences Research Symposium, giving students a chance to showcase their work to peers and faculty. Zaman calls this a flagship course because it builds real-world research skills. Over the years, students have explored everything from how Greek life affects GPA to the link between stress and academic performance, and even the role of nutrition in college health.

Ava Gibbons (’25), who worked on the campus Greek life study in the Fall 2024 semester, said her team’s findings show that Greek life has an overall positive effect on Dukes’ campus experience. “We found that the involvement that you have with your peers and involvement in general, like studying together and even involvement with teachers, increased,” said Gibbons, a member of the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega.

Now pursuing a Master of Occupational Therapy at JMU, Gibbons said the research skills she learned in Zaman’s class will help during her graduate studies and beyond. “I definitely learned a lot from him, how important research is in the health field in general,” she said. “It changed my overall approach to research.”

Gibbons, of Culpeper, Virginia, plans to pursue a career in occupational therapy. “Dr. Zaman’s very personable and wants to get to know his students. Seeing his accomplishments is very inspiring. To see his work makes me think it’s attainable, and I can do the same in a sense.”

Also working on the Greek life study was Dominique Scutti (’25), who is now pursuing a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree at Temple University. A member of Phi Sigma Sigma, she was also drawn to the idea of studying the effects of Greek life on academic success. “My specific research project isn’t going to help me further my career, but the process of it will, because I know how to read a research-based paper and research in general,” she said. “I already have an idea of how the process works.”

Scutti said her classmates nominated her team to compete at the conference, instead of simply displaying and sharing about their projects. They also nominated Scutti as the team member to pitch the project to a panel of judges.

Scutti, who hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recalled Zaman’s support when she had to drive back and forth between JMU and Philly several weekends to attend graduate-school interviews — and how he stopped to talk with her in the hall the following semester, even after she was done with his class. “He’s very, very kind and always there to support his students,” she said. “I think that’s just the biggest thing about him. He’s just such a great person and professor.”

Global health efforts

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zaman was part of a contagious disease feasibility study that looked at vaccine hesitancy around the world. “We tried to understand the magnitude of vaccine hesitancy around the globe, how we can reduce it,” he said.

“I also work with mental health issues, so during that time, we conducted a study at JMU. We recruited more than 500 students to understand their level of depression and anxiety that they felt during COVID, and how it impacted their studies and grading.”

Zaman has published several research articles on antibiotic resistance, focusing on how the misuse and overuse of antibiotics contribute to the emergence of resistant strains. His work explores the public health implications of this growing threat, including its impact on treatment effectiveness and health care costs. The Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute has published other studies Zaman was a part of, including two in 2025 that analyzed antibiotic use in young pneumonia patients in Bangladesh and tracked breast-cancer diagnoses among residents of Saudi Arabia.

“It was a really strong and impactful study,” Zaman said. “The article received significant attention and was widely cited in academic circles. I was interviewed by several globally reputational organizations about our methodology and findings. It also had some policy impact in the local government, like in Bangladesh as well.”

About two to three children in Bangladesh die from pneumonia every hour, and pneumonia is the leading cause of hospitalization in children 4 and younger, according to the abstract of his study, Assessing the Risk of Antibiotic Resistance in Childhood Pneumonia: A Hospital-based Study in Bangladesh.

“Antibiotics were overprescribed, and injections were prescribed at higher levels than [the World Health Organization] recommended,” the study found. “This could pose a threat to antibiotic resistance. There is a need to enforce standard prescribing policies and treatment guidelines to reduce morbidity and mortality among hospitalized children with pneumonia.”

Zaman also collaborated with colleagues in India and Australia to develop a digital tool in a health assistant app that would help health professionals in rural areas compare symptoms and make more accurate diagnoses for their patients.

“That’s the benefit of digital health,” he said. “We worked with the government to demonstrate that this approach is effective. So far, we have developed the app, and they are very pleased with this app. They are currently working to make the app more accessible. Of course, this requires technology, tablet devices, training of the [community health workers], maintenance of the tablet and reliable internet connections.”

By introducing his research at the policy level, Zaman’s approach helps expedite the process of getting new technology into the hands of those who need it most. “In the United States, I have extensive collaborations with researchers through what’s known as global burden of disease studies,” he said.

These studies are mostly funded by the Gates Foundation and supported by the University of Washington, though Zaman said there are more than 400 collaborators across the globe. The studies, he said, “bring together experts from around the world.”

Researchers around the world also rely on the global burden of disease studies for their references. “We use these references, since the reports and articles offer a comprehensive picture of global health trends,” Zaman said.