MIT biochemist joins Thomson Reuters’ annual ‘Top 12’ list

The world's "hottest" researcher is biochemist Rudolf Jaenisch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is joined by scientists scattered from Ann Arbor to Osaka on the annual Thomson Reuters list of the world's 12 hottest researchers.

In its March/April issue of Science Watch, Thomson Reuters identified the dozen authors whose recent papers were cited most often by other researchers during 2009. Jaenisch authored 14 of these Hot Papers. His research investigates reprogrammed fibroblast cells in models of Parkinson's disease, sickle-cell anemia and other conditions.

Mark J. Daly from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard produced 13 Hot Papers on genetic mapping and genome-wide association studies. Several of these reports were co-authored with David Altshuler and Paul I.W. de Bakker from the Broad Institute and Goncalo Abecasis of the University of Michigan -- all of whom are making their first appearance in the annual Top 12 list.

The Broad Institute has a fourth researcher on the list: genomics researcher Eric S. Lander.

Two materials professors from Manchester University in England earned spots in the Top 12: Andre K. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

Shizuo Akira of Osaka University, named by Thomson Reuters as the hottest researcher in 2005 and 2006, returned to the list this year with nine Hot Papers exploring toll-like receptors and aspects of innate immunity.

Rounding out the list are Carlo M. Croce from Ohio State University, Mikhail Katsnelson from Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and Ji-Huan He from Donghua University in Shanghai, China.

"Our annual roundup of researchers who have authored multiple Hot Papers allows us to recognize those who are leading scientific thought," said Christopher King, editor of Science Watch.  "It is exciting to see several researchers make first-time appearances on the list."

Thomson Reuters Hot Papers are derived from its Web of Science(SM) database. A published work is identified as a Hot Paper if it is less than two years old and has achieved a rate of citations in scientific journals that is markedly higher than papers of comparable type and age. The researchers named have published the most Hot Papers in the latest two-year period indexed by Thomson Reuters for inclusion in Web of Science.

SOURCE Thomson Reuters