One of the Highly Cited Researcher awards is going to VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava again this year. Radek Zbořil from the Centre for Energy and Environmental Technologies (CEET) of VŠB-TUO has again made it to the prestigious list of scientists who are among the pioneers in their fields and whose work has a high scientific and social impact.
The list is published annually by Clarivate Analytics. This year, it includes about 6,600 scientists, including 24 Nobel Prize winners, as well as ten researchers who listed their main place of work as domestic research institutes or universities.
Radek Zbořil, a physical chemist, has been working at VŠB-TUO since 2020. He brings the Highly Cited Researcher award to the university for the second year in a row, but this is the fourth time in a row that he has been included in the elite society of scientists.
“It’s not easy to repeatedly be on the list of the world’s most cited scientists in an increasingly competitive environment. The key to success is the right choice of topics and the ability to identify key challenges in the field. And, of course, a great team of scientists who can turn ideas into insights and sell them in the world’s top journals. That’s the kind of people I have around me. My gratitude and a piece of this award belongs to each and every one of my colleagues in Ostrava or Olomouc,” commented Zbořil, who heads the Materials and Environmental Laboratory of the Nanotechnology Centre at CEET. He also works at Palacký University’s CATRIN Czech Research and Advanced Technology Institute in Olomouc. His main focus is on the development of new low-dimensional nanomaterials for applications in medicine, chemistry and environmental cleaning technologies and energy.
The Highly Cited Researchers 2021 list contains the names of approximately 6,600 scientists representing 1,300 institutions from 70 countries. These are researchers whose publications are among the top one percent of most cited papers in their field. The list is based on an analysis of publications from the last ten years according to the Web of Science database.
The majority of the domestic representatives work primarily in institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. These include phytochemist Ondřej Novák, microbiologist Petr Baldrian, ecologists Petr Pyšek and Jan Pergl, physicist Tomáš Jungwirth and botanist Francesco de Bello. Roman Pavela represents the Research Institute of Plant Production. Domestic universities are the main home institution in only three cases – besides the VŠB-TUO, there are also the University of Hradec Králové, for which its rector Kamil Kuča made it to the list, and Masaryk University, where Dmitriy Chudakov is based.
The United States of America has the largest representation, almost 40 percent. Mainland China continues to make great strides forward, boasting an all-time high of 934 highly cited researchers this year. The UK is third with 492 researchers. Neighbouring Germany has 330 representatives, Austria 46, Poland six and Slovakia four.