Five Stony Brook Faculty Honored as 2025 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers
Five Stony Brook University faculty members have been recognized once again on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list, an honor that places them among the top one percent of researchers worldwide.
Paolo Boffetta, MD, Christopher Gobler, James Lattimer, Roman Kotov and Ping Liu are among 6,868 researchers from 60 countries and regions across the world on the 2025 list, and all five were honored last year as well. Each researcher was selected for their work that has made a transformative impact across disciplines.
The Highly Cited Researchers demonstrate significant and broad influence in their respective fields of research, and each person selected has authored multiple Highly Cited Papers that rank in the top one percent by citations for their fields and publication year in the Web of Science Core Collection over the past 11 years. This list is then refined using other quantitative metrics, as well as qualitative analysis and expert judgment.
“Stony Brook researchers are catalyzing and contributing to the creation and application of new knowledge in a wide variety of fields, including artificial intelligence, climate science, quantum, health and medicine,” said said Carl Lejuez, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “I am pleased to see five of our researchers recognized for their efforts and their contributions to their fields on this year’s Clarivate list.”
Boffetta, associate director for population sciences at the Stony Brook Cancer Center and a professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine, Renaissance School of Medicine, earned recognition in Cross-Field research. His body of work, encompassing more than 1,300 scientific articles, explores the environmental factors behind cancer.
Gobler, SUNY Distinguished Professor and the Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), and director of the New York State Center for Clean Water Technology, was recognized in Plant and Animal Science for his research on climate change, harmful algal blooms and ocean acidification. Gobler’s work has significantly influenced the preservation of marine ecosystems.
Kotov, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Renaissance School of Medicine, was recognized in Psychiatry and Psychology for his groundbreaking work in refining the classification of mental disorders. Kotov’s research uses advanced methods in molecular genetics, neuroscience and quantitative modeling to unravel the complexities of mental health.
Lattimer, SUNY Distinguished Professor in Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, was celebrated in Cross-Field research for his contributions to nuclear astrophysics. His work on neutron stars, including theories on the origin of heavy elements and groundbreaking discoveries about their cores, has shaped our understanding of the cosmos.
Liu, a theorist in Brookhaven National Laboratory’s chemistry division and adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, was recognized in Cross-Field research for her groundbreaking work on materials for energy production, conversion and storage. Her research explores the theoretical properties of diverse materials across various forms, including nanostructures and surfaces.
To keep pace with evolving trends in the global research landscape, the evaluation process for the Highly Cited Researchers program has been refined to uphold the highest standards of research integrity. Enhanced filters now address issues such as hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation and anomalous citation patterns, ensuring that honorees meet the rigorous benchmarks required for this recognition.
“As the need for high-quality data from rigorously selected sources is becoming ever more important, we have adapted and responded to technological advances and shifts in the publishing landscape,” said David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. “Just as we have applied stringent standards and transparent selection criteria to identify trusted journals in the Web of Science, we continue to refine our evaluation and selection policies for our annual Highly Cited Researchers program to address the challenges of an increasingly complex and polluted scholarly record.”