The Indefatigable Ashutosh Tiwari

The Sweden-based scamferencer Ashutosh Tiwari is really a criminal genius. Every other crook in his place would have given up long ago, or at least found himself unable to do this predatory conference business, having been publicly exposed, ridiculed and slapped with misconduct sanctions. Maybe Tiwari’s intellectual weakness is actually his biggest strength. He just continues, because academia, in India, Europe and the rest of the world, is full of fellow morons. To lure those, his fantasy institution, the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) and its associated fantasy research centre, Institute for Advanced Materials (IAM), keep boasting their impressive internet presence despite being physically located, well, probably in Tiwari’s bathroom. All to assure that Tiwari’s international scamference circus on various ferry ships stays afloat, with only minor modifications.

For backstory about Tiwari’s predatory conference business, here is a choice of my articles. For those in a hurry, there’s a summary in the most recent one, and do find time to read the very first article on this bizarre affair:

Sure, Tiwari’s once beloved fake professorship title can’t be used, sure, the big names aren’t coming to scamferences since our protagonist from Allahabad and his English mentor of many years, Anthony Turner, parted their ways, all after misconduct findings at Linköping University (LiU). Sure, other business partners of IAAM in academia involuntarily had to keep their distance also, but still.

Tiwari’s former LiU colleague Mikael Syväjarvi is still there at IAAM (probably because he is not at LiU anymore), and so are many new and old friends from India. Tiwari, who used to invent young blonde women as his imaginary assistants, even managed to recruit more Europeans – after all, you need white faces to make the scamference shitshow work properly.

Now let me introduce to some new business partners of Tiwari.

Among the many Indian partners in crime, a certain Anshuman Mishra needs a special mention because of his title:

“Dr. Anshuman Mishra is Prof. Herbert Gleiter Fellow and Group Leader at Translational Research & Sustainable Healthcare Management, Institute of Advanced Materials, IAAM.“

Now, IAM and IAAM are of course both fantasy constructs, the “institute” doesn’t have any labs, unless you count Tiwari’s lavatory in his Ulrika home as a laboratory. But the title of “Prof. Herbert Gleiter Fellow” is hilarious indeed. Because Herbert Gleiter is an octogenarian emeritus professor of nanotechnology in Germany and a member of national Academy of Science, who is so infatuated with Tiwari and his fake medals that Gleiter eagerly poses and advertises for predatory conferences. Maybe Gleiter has age-related dementia, or maybe he was always a vain men of low ethics. Not my problem, but Leopoldina’s and Karslruhe Institute’s of Technology.

Then we have a Pavel Osmera, Czech physicist who holds professorships at two universities: Brno University of Technology and Masaryk University, also in Brno. Osmera did not reply to emails. But if he was listed by Tiwari without his knowledge, he should would have replied. I informed both universities, they know my work there already. No reply though.

The rest are folks from India, Tiwari’s wilful partners in crime. Some are naive Indian students fresh from the university whom Tiwari tricked into working for him UNPAID. I.e, in the best case they are offered unpaid internships, but I was contacted by employees who had actual work contracts with Tiwari and haven’t been paid a penny. The system works on blackmail: if you protest too much about the lack of payment, you lose your employment and thus the visa needed to stay in Sweden and Europe. And nobody wants to be sent back to India where they answered Tiwari’s “job” offers because they couldn’t find a decent job. I don’t know how they convince students to work gratis for Tiwari’s franchise in India (Vinoba Bhave Research Institute, VBRI), but recall that guy with a gun Tiwari has with him when in India. Maybe this is the trick.

Here is how Tiwari recruits the slaves, whose job is most likely to organise scamferences and write “research” papers for him, via so-called “international pre-PhD program for Indian appearing or just passed post graduate students“. The victims believe if they work hard and unpaid for this Sahib, he will employ them for a Made-in-Sweden PhD.

Apparently, Tiwari and his gang contact Indian universities and find willing partners there, professors who out of stupidity or crookedness drive their students into the IAAM trap. This is how the Tiwari scam always operates: there are enough crooks and morons in academia willing to work with him, all he needs is to tickle their vanity.

Here is the admission form, where the Indian applicants are for some reason required to declare “Father’s/Husband’s Name”:

It is not just the Indians, Syväjarvi and the Czech Osmera. Until last weekend, there was a certain Romanian team member, Dana Cristina Toncu, here is the backup of her IAAM profile. Tiwari informed us there that

“Dr. Toncu is currently leading the R&D programmes at the Institute of Advanced Materials, IAAM.

Of course there is no R&D and no IAAM in real life as opposed to the shiny website, unless, again, Tiwari’s toilet. Toncu therefore helped Tiwari with organising scamferencing and running his predatory publishing side-business, as managing editor of the pseudo-journal Advanced Materials Letters (here backup). But of course Tiwari doesn’t publish in his own predatory journal, but at Elsevier, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and American Chemical Society (ACS) journals, and indeed Toncu also co-authored a number of recent papers with him there.

Toncu just this year joined the University College Dublin’s School of Chemistry as Research Work-Flow Coordinator, and she was very unhappy when I contacted her and her new superiors. She informed me:

“I was invited by Dr Tiwari to write a book chapter in 2014, and later to help him with his institute in 2020. I left the institute in Oct 2021, and even his journal. […]

I can always prove to anybody the correct input of my work in any collaboration and, unless you have personal accusations against myself, am wondering what drives your actions. Surely, in all these years, you would have given up what seems rather a personal obsession than a seek of justice. Therefore, I am informing you, taking advantage of my colleagues’ email/witness, that if you place me on your website, I will take you to court! You have no authority to use my name for your own investigation or whatever you hold against dr. Tiwari!“

But Dana, dr. Tiwari is not enough, for you it’s Professor Tiwari or Mr President! But fun aside, it is not true Toncu left IAAM a year ago. A witness told me they personally saw Toncu working with Tiwari on some scamference in May 2022.

There is also this, the programme of “Translational Research and Innovation Cooperation (TRIC)- special focus on Climate Neutral Materials & Technology” which took place in Tiwari’s Swedish home village in Ulrika (where he bought some real estate). The event took place on 19 July 2022 and featured an “Invited Lecture Dana C Toncu, Institute of Advanced Materials, IAAM, Sweden“, which kind of additionally proves Toncu was not entirely honest when insisting she left IAAM in 2021. She remained silent when faced with the evidence.

And then Toncu accused me of cyber-extortion:

“I have asked Dr. Tiwari to publish our email on his website, you know, the one talking about your cyber extortion.“

Oh yes, that. Back December 2017, Tiwari set up an anonymous troll account on Twitter to accuse yours truly and some others of cybercrimes and blackmail. Smut Clyde blogged about it:

“Then toys were flung, and trolleys lost their wheels, and the @StopBlackmailer twitter-egg sprang into existence, like grey-eyed Athene, Goddess of quantum-vacuum fluctuations, birthed from the head of Zeus.

Most notably, he (or she) has been lashing out at innocent bystanders in Swedish academia, looking for potential rivals who might have been behind Tiwari’s unwanted exposure… […]
The twitstorms have acquired Trumpian proportions, with umpteen dozen copies of each denunciation blasted out in an hour to nearly 6000 followers who were acquired en masse from a Bot-broker.”

Toncu later on admitted that there never was any extortion actually, only my articles which she sees as “cyber-bullying” of her dear colleague dr. Tiwari. In this regard, she wrote to director@iaam.se, with her Dublin faculty colleagues in cc:

“While I appreciated our collaboration, your delay in taking me off your website caused the ‘honour’ of having to deal with your old friend Leonid. He seems to have proof that I even attended events, and I have no idea what he is talking about. To my knowledge, as a member of your team, I attended 10 IAC 2021, European Advanced Materials Congress 2021, and ICTRI-HEE2021. There is no recording of me attending such events because I never did!!! I enjoyed contributing to our MSCA-DN-2021 and M-ERA.NET proposals. I am sure that, given the anti-terrorism law, there is proof that could be used in court stored on servers for up to several years to show that I have not attended whatever he claims I did. This is cyberbullying and it’s not fair to me to be targeted by such people. Please remove me from IAAM’s website ASAP so that this cyberbullying stops!

I am aware that we still have a couple of review papers to which I have contributed, and I assure you that I will do my co-author duty to contribute to the high quality publication of these manuscripts.

I have contacted the UCD Professor in charge of such cyberbullying and she will guide me, but you have to remove me from the website and stop this cyberbullying right now.“

Tiwari swiftly obliged and removed Toncu off the IAAM website. Apparently, in the small Swedish village of Ulrika they have a “terrorism” problem, and it’s me. And the problem now reached Ireland! Unlike Toncu’s direct superior (who, once finally informed, forwarded the email thread “to the appropriate authorities in UCD for further investigation“), her department heads at UCD remained silent, maybe they are afraid of my cyber-bullying. Maybe they don’t want to endanger their chances to collaborate with Dr Tiwari on multi-million Euro heavy EU Commission grants once he gets those together with Toncu? Or maybe they hope to win their own IAAM Medals, with a special discount?

Bad news, Irish friends! Toncu declared that the IAAM medals are worthless after I suggested she gives some to her new colleagues in Dublin:

“As of your fantasist medals, do you really think that UCD, a reputable institution raked in the first 1%, really needs them????“

True that. But in this way she admitted that the IAAM she still affiliates herself with in her “research” papers, is as “fantasist” just as its medals, awards and fellowships are. I wonder if using an impressive-sounding academic affiliation of a non-existent entity such as IAAM constitutes research misconduct. Like here, the fictional IAAM listed right next to Toncu’s recently acquired affiliation “School of Chemistry, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland“. The paper is useless inane trash, but the Elsevier journal has an impact factor of 16.8 which is probably another reason why Toncu’s department leadership at UCD remained silent.

B.K. Nahak , S. Preetam , Deepa Sharma , S.K. Shukla , Mikael Syväjärvi , Dana-Cristina Toncu , Ashutosh Tiwari Advancements in net-zero pertinency of lignocellulosic biomass for climate neutral energy production Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112393

The Editor-in-Chief of this journal, the Belfast professor Aoife Foley, previously announced to me to have “paused the special indefinitely” after a certain gang of crooks infiltrated her journal with nonsense papers full of bought citations, with the journal’s special issue as the port of entry. But Tiwari doesn’t need all this circular-peer-review special-issue backdoor nonsense, the gates of Foley’s exclusive journal are already wide open for the scholarly wisdom from the venerated IAAM. She didn’t reply to my email this time.

Hejsan hopsan, here’s another nice paper for UCD, this time at a Royal Society of Chemistry journal, edited by the rector of the Uppsala University in Sweden, Anders Hagfeldt:

Varshika Singh , Santanu Patra , Natarajan Arul Murugan , Dana-Cristina Toncu , Ashutosh Tiwari Recent trends in computational tools and data-driven modeling for advanced materials Materials Advances (2022) doi: 10.1039/d2ma00067a

In this regard, Hagfeldt (who is now in trouble with his own bad science) told me:

“I am not handling manuscripts for the journal Materials Advances. This is taken care of by the RSC office. For complaints about articles I refer to our Executive Editor Dr Jeremy Allen.“

Allen announced that the learned society publisher RSC actually welcomes Tiwari as their author, pardon, paying customer:

“Many thanks for passing on your concerns around the author Ashutosh Tiwari. Should you have any specific concerns with the published review in Materials Advances that you mentioned, https://doi.org/10.1039/D2MA00067A, please let us know and we can investigate further.“

These new papers are actually where the new dimension of the scandal is. Tiwari is once again welcome everywhere, even at RSC, as if nothing at all has come to light in the meantime, nobody minds the fraud and the scamferences.

Since his expulsion from Linköping (both from the university and from the IAAM seat in the neighbouring Science Park) in 2019, the new resident of the village Ulrika published a serious string of papers, and I am not talking about his own VBRI Press or other predatory publishers. Here is the Dimensions record, hint: don’t search for “Ashutosh Tiwari” because there is a materials science professor in USA of the same name, on top of other Ashutoshs Tiwaris, the confusion was apparently even used by our scamference friend to get grants and fellowships and to almost get appointed as professor at LiU.

In brief, the man who was exposed as a fraudster in the field of nanotechnology and biosensor science, is now apparently a big expert on COVID-19 and climate change. It’s always a review, because Tiwari is too stingy to do like other scholars of his kind and buy a “research” paper from a papermill. But so what, journals love reviews on hot topics, they are supposed to get cited a lot and drive the impact factor up. Capitalism teaches that where there is the demand, there is a supply, and Tiwari will always supply.

Like this, in a Wiley journal (published in Beijing), a pseudo-expert review possibly written by those enslaved and unacknowledged students:

Sudheesh K. Shukla , Santanu Patra , Trupti R. Das , Dharmesh Kumar , Anshuman Mishra , Ashutosh Tiwari Progress in COVID research and developments during pandemic View (2022) doi: 10.1002/viw.20210020

“The authors are thankful to International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM), Sweden and National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), India for providing funding to conduct this research.”

Also, several papers got published in the Elsevier journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics X (Impact Factor 10.6). Like this nonsense:

Anshuman Mishra , Santanu Patra , Vaibhav Srivastava , Lokman Uzun , Yogendra Kumar Mishra , Mikael Syväjärvi , Ashutosh Tiwari Progress in paper-based analytical devices for climate neutral biosensing Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.biosx.2022.100166 

There’s a huge bit of irony here. Biosensors and Bioelectronics X is the Open Access mirror journal to complement the original subscription journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics both share the same editorial board). The original subscription journal was in turn founded by Tiwari’s mentor, Tony Turner, and where Turner and Tiwari published a lot of their own trash. In the course of LiU investigations, Turned was first forcibly retired as professor at LiU without emeritus status, then slapped with research misconduct findings and forced to resign as Editor-in-Chief of his journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

Tiwari publishing in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, even in its X version, is way too hilarious and bizarre even for Elsevier standards. Kind of proves scholarly publishing is f***ed up beyond repair. Turner’s successor, the US professor Chenzhong Li didn’t reply to my email. Another stupid review:

Subham Preetam , Bishal Kumar Nahak , Santanu Patra , Dana Cristina Toncu , Sukho Park , Mikael Syväjärvi , Gorka Orive , Ashutosh Tiwari Emergence of microfluidics for next generation biomedical devices Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.biosx.2022.100106

There will sure be much more coming up, because the journal waives the OA fee of $1700 until 31 December 2022. Crooks like Tiwari will always find other rotten scientists at the helm of some rotten yet high-impact-factor journal. But if you submit your paper there, it will be rejected as not good enough. It shouldn’t look too much like proper science, you see.

It should instead look like this garbage, with another learned society publisher:

Bishal Kumar Nahak, Anshuman Mishra, Subham Preetam, Ashutosh Tiwari Advances in Organ-on-a-Chip Materials and Devices ACS Appl. Bio Mater. (2022) doi: 10.1021/acsabm.2c00041

The editor of this ACS journal is the US professor Kirk Schanze, a man always wide open for any fraud from India and China, no questions asked and full protection guaranteed. Like here:

Let me now show you some nincompoops and dimwits in our esteemed academia who run about proudly announcing they embezzled public money for Tiwari’s worthless IAAM medal.

A announcement from April 2022 by a German research consortium:

“Lukas Hahn was honoured by the International Association for Advanced Materials (IAAM) with the IAAM Young Scientist Medal for his results from the SFB/TRR225-funded doctorate, which he presented as part of the Advanced Materials Lecture Series. He completed his doctorate at the Julius-Maximilians University of Würzburg under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Robert Luxenhofer.”

🎉So proud of Lukas Hahn. He was honoured by the International Association for Advanced Materials (IAAM) with the IAAM Young Scientist Medal for his results from the @SFB_TRR225-funded doctorate @Uni_WUE under the supervision of @LuxenhoferLab. pic.twitter.com/s1Sx4E7qST

— TRR225Biofab (@SFB_TRR225) April 7, 2022

This is particularly painful, a Ukrainian scientist in Germany brings shame about his compatriot researchers. An announcement by the German-Ukrainian Academic Society from March 2022:

“Our founding member, Denys Makarov has received a Medal of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) in recognition for his contribution to the development of skin-conformal flexible and printable magnetoelectronics.

[…] Since October 2015 Denys is heading the research group “Intelligent materials and devices” at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR).

Denys Makarov won numerous research grants, including an ERC Starting Grant “SMaRT: Shapeable Magnetoelectronics in Research and Technology”  in 2012 and an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant “MagnetoFLEX: Ultra-thin flexible Magnetic sensorics” in 2013. In 2014 Denys won the EU FET (Future& Emerging Technologies) Young Explorers grant “Curved Nanomembranes for Topological Quantum Computation”. Denys Makarov also won Helmholtz Innovation Lab“ (PI) “FlexiSens: Smart magnetic field sensorics” and is a leading PI from the HZDR on the EU Horizon2020-Widespread grant “Twinning on novel biomolecular electronics based on “smart” nanomaterials (BIONANOSENS)” (2020-2023), project web-site.”

Makarov is no spring chicken and should have known what he was buying from Tiwari using public research funds. He told me:

“I was not aware that this is a fraudulent medal. I will take respective measures. “

I asked Makarov how much he paid for that IAAM medal and suggested he shares his email exchanges with Tiwari. No reply since. Must be the Dresden effect which somehow attracts scientific malpractice. Bad choices in Dresden, once again.

There are other recent IAAM awardees, e.g. a proud adjunct professor in Poland, Dr Krystian Mistewicz, some folks in China and India, but not only. Some complain that the prestigious IAAM medal is not gratis at all, you must pay for congress participation:

Others are more than happy to collaborate. Here a press release by the North Carolina State University in USA, from November 2021:

“Professor Richard Spontak has been selected as the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) Researcher of the Year.

With over 50,000 members from over 100 countries, the IAAM is a principal organization in the field of advanced materials. The title of Researcher of the Year “is one of the highest awards conferred by IAAM to honor the scientists and researchers who have been involved in high-end research for 25 years or more and have significantly contributed to the area of Materials Science, Engineering, and Technology…  The IAAM presents the honor to recognize excellence in research and recognize leading ground-breaking scientific contributions.”

Recipients of the Researcher of the Year award deliver an award lecture either online in the IAAM Advanced Materials Lecture Series or in an assembly of the Advanced Materials Congress. The lectures are recorded and published in the Open Access Video journal of IAAM, Video Proceedings of Advanced Materials.

Prof. Spontak’s informative and entertaining lecture, “There and Back Again: A Professor’s Tale” can be viewed here (double click for full-screen viewing).”

Spontak however is most certainly not a clueless victim. He is up to his neck part of Tiwari’s scam, he even celebrated his birthday at an IAAM scamference.

I bet there will be a fellowship named after Spontak at IAAM soon. If there’s one already.

Oh, and Tiwari even found a way to avoid getting his spam emails spammed. He sets up serious-looking accounts like “chair@icmscitech.org”:

What a bizarre case this Ashu is.

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