Twenty-five Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering faculty rated among the world’s top 2 percent scientists in their fields for 2024 in the prestigious Stanford/Elsevier rankings.
The school’s success was highlighted by Professor of Informatics Santo Fortunato, who was the Luddy School’s highest rated scientist, coming in at 1,543 of more than 400,000 ranked scientists.
Stanford/Elsevier top 2-percent rankings are published annually. Study authors analyze the work of more than two million scientists worldwide involving 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields based on their career or a single year to determine their impact in their fields.
The Informatics Department alone had 11 faculty make the rankings. The Computer Science and Intelligent Systems Engineering Departments each had four. Information and Library Science had three.
“Many universities in their entirety would be happy to have such numbers as we enjoy in our department,” said Johan Bollen, Informatics Department chair and professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science, who is also listed among the top scientists. “It’s an astonishing success that highlights our faculty’s continued high research productivity and impact.”
Ranked Informatics faculty besides Fortunato and Bollen were Randall Beer, professor of Computer Science and Informatics; YY Ahn, professor of Informatics and Computing; Haewoon Kwak, associate professor of Informatics; Filippo Menczer, Luddy Distinguished Professor of Informatics and Computer Science; Erik Stolterman, professor of Informatics; Peter Todd, professor of Cognitive Science, Psychology and Informatics; Filippo Radicchi, professor of Informatics; Staša Milojević, professor of Informatics; and Colin Gray, associate professor of Informatics.
Ranked Intelligent Systems Engineering faculty were Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering Ariful Azad; Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering James Glazier; Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering Lei Jiang; and Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering Minje Kim.
“That faculty members of the department of Intelligent Systems Engineering are named on the Stanford/Elsevier Top 2-percent Scientists List 2024 is a nice acknowledgement of the globally impactful work that they are doing,” said Beth Plale, Intelligent Systems Engineering chair and Michael A and Laurie Burns McRobbie Bicentennial Professor of Computer Engineering.
Ranked Computer Science faculty were David Crandall, Luddy Professor of Computer Science and director of Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center; Matthew Hahn, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science; Yuzhen Ye, Computer Science chair and professor of Informatics and Computer Science; and XiaoFeng Wang, James H. Rudy Professor of Computer Science, Engineering and Informatics.
“The Computer Science department cultivates an open-minded and inclusive environment that enables faculty members to excel across diverse fields, including a wide range of interdisciplinary research areas,” Ye said.
Ranked Library and Information Science faculty were Noriko Hara, Information and Library Science Chair, professor of Information Science; Blaise Cronin, Rudy Professor Emeritus of Information Science; and Susan Herring, professor of Information Science.
"I'm pleased to see senior faculty in the ILS ranked on this list," Hara said, "but it's also important to note that ILS faculty as a whole are highly productive. I am also delighted to see not only ILS faculty, but also faculty from throughout the Luddy School recognized for research excellence."
Also earning high rankings were Katy Börner, Victor H. Yngve Distinguished Professor of Engineering and Information Science; Selma Šabanović, professor of Informatics and associate dean for faculty affairs; and Gerardo Ortiz, adjunct professor.
Rankings are based on multiple factors, including the total number of citations received, total number of citations received to papers in which the scientist is the only author, total number of citations to papers where the scientist is single or first author, and total number of citations to papers where the scientist is single, first or last author. The data centers on the number of publications and multiple citation metrics that measures research impact.
Fortunato said that traditional cumulative rankings, which use the total number of citations (including the famed h-index), credit all collaborators, even if most of the work, and the idea behind it, came from one or two scientists.
Inflated or unfair recognition can result.
The Stanford/Elsevier study was different, Fortunato said, because it values citations to papers in which the scientist did most of the work as project planner or researcher.
In Fortunato’s case, he is the first or corresponding author of most of his cited work.
Santo’s work includes single authoring a paper that has generated close to 13,000 citations according to Google Scholar. He said most of his research centers on network science, specifically on the problem of detecting communities (cohesive groups of nodes) in networks.
“After years and years of work,” Fortunato said, “I just finished a book on this topic. It will be published by the end of 2025.”
Bollen said Fortunato has been tremendously productive and influential in all aspects of his research activities.
“He has a truly excellent record of publishing ground-breaking work that is widely recognized as world-leading in a very interdisciplinary field that has found widespread applications throughout society,” Bollen said.
The Informatics Department’s strong showing, Bollen added, reflects its commitment to difference-making research.
“We are a very interdisciplinary department that focuses on important “big idea”-research that matters to society: health, misinformation, social media, network science, complex systems, human computer interaction, robotics, and generative AI, to name few. Our faculty are among the most productive, not just in terms of their ability to raise extramural funding for their research, but also through influential research publications that define the cutting-edge in their respective fields.
“You must be among the most productive and impactful scientists worldwide to make it into this ranking. For Informatics to have 10 of our faculty in this list is a strong affirmation of our world-leading status.”
Bollen said that Associate Professor Goren Gordon, who joined the Informatics faculty this semester, also made the list for his previous work. He mentioned rising department stars such as Jacob Foster, professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science;, Mary Jean Amon, assistant professor; Cici Ling, assistant professor, and more,
“All of them are at the top of their games,” Bollen said. “If they’re not in the top 2 percent now, they will be.”