Congratulations, Dr. Juan Pablo Bascur!
PHD DEFENCE
On 21 January 2026, Juan Pablo Bascur successfully defended his PhD thesis at Leiden University, titled 'Science maps for information retrieval'.
Juan Pablo Bascur was supervised by Ludo Waltman, Suzan Verberne, and Nees Jan van Eck. In his dissertation, he investigated how science maps can be designed, evaluated, and improved to support information retrieval in scientific literature.
Juan Pablo explains: ‘My research examines how science maps can be used not just to analyse science, but to actively support information retrieval. I show that science maps can complement traditional search methods while revealing blind spots and topic-dependent strengths and weaknesses. I also demonstrate how different data sources shape which topics become visible in a science map.’
In her laudation after the PhD defence, Suzan Verberne praised Juan Pablo’s work: 'If there is one thing that characterizes you then it is your analytical thinking. Your analyses sometimes went so deeply that even we as supervisors sometimes lost track. You always could think about another analysis level of the data or a new view on the results that you obtained'. She also highlighted the fact that Juan's PhD was self-funded: 'a huge achievement.'
Juan Pablo Bascur worked on his PhD in Scientometrics at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) and the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), both at Leiden University. He has a background in biochemistry and machine learning and has worked as a researcher in both academic and industry settings. Concurrently with his doctoral research, he has been involved in research, teaching, and academic services in the fields of data science, computational social science, and artificial intelligence.
At CWTS, we are very proud of Juan Pablo’s achievement and look forward to following his work and achievements to come. We wish him all the best for his future career!