Time and again: “Highly Cited Researcher“ at HITS

For seven years running, computer scientist Alexandros Stamatakis from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) has been named one of the most cited researchers worldwide, according to this year’s “Highly Cited Researchers” list from Clarivate. The ranking is an important indicator for the impact of a researcher’s scientific publications.

Computer scientist Alexandros Stamatakis from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) again belongs to the most cited researchers worldwide, based on a study by Clarivate Analytics. He is listed in the ranking with a primary affiliation at HITS, his secondary affiliation is the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The ranking is an important indicator for the impact of a researcher’s scientific publications. The citations of their publications rank cumulatively among the top one percent in their fields and publication years. 6,938 researchers from 69 countries and regions have been recognized this year, among them 369 researchers from Germany.

For seven years running, Alexandros Stamatakis has earned this exclusive distinction, based on the number of highly cited papers he produced over an 11-year period from January 2011 to December 2021. This year, he is listed in the category “Biology and Biochemistry.”

Scalable software for huge biological datasets

Alexandros Stamatakis develops software for analyzing huge biological datasets. His research focus lies on the development of scalable methods and software for the analysis of molecular sequence data. Stamatakis´ publications have made a substantial contribution to current evolutionary biology. His work covers software for inferring evolutionary trees, the evaluation and use of emerging parallel computer architectures, the evolution of cancer cells, and the statistical classification of gut bacteria. Alexandros Stamatakis has reconstructed the evolutionary trees of insects and birds in two international research projects. In 2022, he earned an ERA Chair by the European Research Council.

Alexandros Stamatakis has been in charge of the “Computational Molecular Evolution” research group at HITS since 2010, and is a full Professor for High Performance Computing in the Life Sciences at Institute for Theoretical Informatics of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). In 2021 he was also appointed as affiliated scientist of the Paleogenomics and Evolutionary Genetics (PEG) lab at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas in Heraklion, Greece.

The ”who is who” of influential researchers

The citation number is an indicator for the scientific impact of a paper. The “Highly Cited Researchers” list is published by the U.S. company Clarivate Analytics. The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the “Web of Science” citation index. The methodology that determines the “who’s who” of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these scientific elite are based.

See Alexandros Stamatakis on the Clarivate “Web of Science” Site: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/1487274

The full 2022 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online here.

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HITS Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies
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