Old Elizabethan academic ranked among world’s top scientists

QE alumnus Dr Mustafa Sarkar has been named among the world’s leading sports and exercise scientists in an annual survey.

For the second consecutive year, Mustafa (OE 1997–2004) has been ranked in the top 2% worldwide in his field. Mustafa was also seventh in the UK and 32nd globally in his field for researchers with their first publication from 2012 onwards,

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Mustafa: as this ranking demonstrates, he is forging a very distinguished career at Nottingham Trent University.”

Stanford University’s World’s Top 2% Scientists ranking evaluates researchers based on how often their work is cited by others, their role in research, and their productivity.

Mustafa is an Associate Professor of Sport and Performance Psychology at Nottingham Trent. His research addresses the psychology of performance excellence, with a particular focus on resilience, psychological safety, and mental health.

He leads the High Performing Individuals, Teams and Organisations (HPITO) theme at Nottingham Trent’s Sport, Health and Performance Enhancement Research Centre. He also sits on the University Shadow Executive Team (USET).

He teaches sport and performance psychology across the undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes and contributes to the second-year undergraduate module, Practical Applications in Sport Psychology, and is module leader for the postgraduate module Performance Psychology.

Mustafa graduated from Loughborough University in 2008 with a first-class degree in Sport and Exercise Science. Before arriving at Nottingham Trent in 2015 as a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, he spent two years as a Research Fellow at the University of Gloucestershire.

• Mustafa was the subject of the first-ever OE Spotlight feature in Edition 7 of QE’s Sports Bulletin, published in the 2024 Spring Term.