For the best PhD thesis award, students graduating in the past 2 years (dates given by acad office) are considered - this also includes students from IITB-Monash program. Following is the procedure used for selecting students for the Best PhD thesis award.

1. 1) ?The final defence evaluation report is sent by the acad office - often it is missing for several students (almost for 40% of the students), making it difficult to assess students based on this report alone.

2. 2) ?To alleviate the situation, at the department we ask ALL students to fill up the attached form of their publication records at the time of defence. The key information we get from this is the cumulative H index and impact factor of all the publication with the student as the first author.

3. 3) ?At the time of shortlisting the students, in case the form is missing for some student, we contact their advisor and have her/him provide the appropriate information regarding the student's publication within a stipulated time.

4. 4) ?Students are ranked according to the their cumulative ‘H index’ (first author publications only). For the top?few students we also look at other information?–?Cumulative impact Factor, Patents, Conference proceedings, Book chapters , Thesis evaluation reports (if available), and decide on 2 best students for the award