Aiguo Dai Listed Among the World’s Most-Cited Scientists in New Database

Aiguo Dai, Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. (Photo by Patrick Dodson)

ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 10, 2019) – A new global database of the top 100,000 most-cited scientists has placed Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences (DAES) Professor Aiguo Dai among the elite in his field and across all disciplines.

The rankings, developed by a group of researchers at Stanford University, assessed scientists across the globe based on their research citations. Based on 2017 citations alone, Dai is ranked No. 2 in the field of meteorology/atmospheric science and within the top 380 of all ranked scientists. In the paper’s career-wide analysis, which dates back to 1996, he ranked No. 24 in his field and just outside the top three percent overall.

A composite score was awarded based on six different citation metrics. More weight was given to the total number of times a scientist was listed as the single, lead author, or last author of a cited research paper. Self-citations were excluded to provide a more accurate representation of scientific impact.The top-cited scientists were selected from about 7 million around the world who have published at least five papers in their career. Scientists are classified into 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields.

More than 60 UAlbany faculty are listed on the database, including numerous researchers from the School of Public Health, College of Arts & Sciences, School of Business, School of Criminal Justice, College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, School of Education, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy and the Center for Technology in Government.

To view the full list of faculty, visit this PLOS Biology article.

“This ranking represents a new milestone in quantitative evaluation of the impact of scientists in their fields,” said Dai. “It’s an honor to be recognized. I’m grateful to UAlbany for providing me with an excellent environment to do research and for my colleagues at DAES who continue to support me.”

“Professor Dai’s research is a great example of the high-impact work and weather and climate that is occurring at UAlbany," said DAES Chair and Professor Ryan Torn. "I am happy that Aiguo’s work has been recognized by scientists around the world and congratulate him on a significant personal achievement.”

Dai has published more than 140 peer-reviewed research articles among dozens of well-respected journals in atmospheric and climate sciences. He is the most cited scholar at UAlbany, according to Google Scholar, with a total of more than 33,000 citations, an annual citation rate exceeding 4,200 per year, and an h-index of 70.

He is currently working on several climate change-related projects, including how Arctic rapid warming and sea-ice loss may affect mid-latitude weather and climate; how future precipitation and atmospheric thermodynamic conditions may change under increasing greenhouse gases; and how precipitation, droughts and other hydroclimate fields have changed since the 1950s. 

For a list of his publications, see Dai’s Google Scholar profile.

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