NUS probing work of ex-medicine faculty member

SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) has opened an investigation after reports that former faculty member Anoop Shankar had faked his academic credentials.

"In view of the media reports on Anoop Shankar, NUS has initiated an internal investigation into his research publications when he was at NUS," a university spokesman said yesterday.

According to his resume, the former assistant professor at NUS graduated from India's top medical school when he was 21 and had a doctorate in epidemiology.

However, a review of his work by West Virginia University in the United States found that Mr Shankar had only a master's degree from the University of North Carolina and did not graduate from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

In addition, some publications listed on his resume were either authored by someone else, or did not exist.

Mr Shankar was at NUS' Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine from 2005 to 2008, where he was part of the department of community, occupational and family medicine. There, he wrote several papers on topics such as diabetes, and was also part of a research programme looking into eye diseases in Singapore.

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