No less than three of the world’s most influential scientists in their field carry out research at Ulm University. This fact was revealed by the North American media corporation Thomson Reuters in its publication analysis “The world’s most influential scientific minds 2014”.
The list was compiled using information from the citation indices “Web of Science” and “InCites” to determine which researchers had been cited most frequently (top 1% in the year of publication) by their peers in specialist articles between 2002 and 2012. Among these 3,200 or so pioneers
from 21 subject categories are two physicians from Ulm, Profs Hartmut Döhner and Heiko Braak. The third scientist from Ulm is the physics professor Fedor Jelezko.
The recently published table also includes scientists who were cited frequently in 2012 and 2013. These ‘hot papers’ are considered to be highly relevant.“This publication analysis confirms that Ulm University is an attractive location for leading world-class researchers,” enthuses Prof Axel Groß, Vice President for Research and Information Technology at Ulm University.
Heiko Braak, senior professor at the Department of Neurology / Center for Clinical Research at Ulm University Hospital is one of the most cited researchers in the field of neuroscience and behavioural science. Braak explores neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. One of the medical scientist’s successes was to develop a classification scheme used all over the world to classify into stages typical changes to the brain during the course of Alzheimer’s disease.
Prof Hartmut Döhner, Medical Director of the Department of Internal Medicine III, spokesperson of the “Comprehensive Cancer Center Ulm” and Ulm University’s Vice President for Medicine, primarily conducts research into the most common blood cancers in adulthood, namely acute myeloid and chronic lymphocytic leukaemias. He identified genetic changes that may reveal information about the progression of the disease and the success of the therapy. Based on these findings, new molecular-targeted therapies can be developed. International guidelines used to treat leukaemia are based on Döhner’s cancer research. According to Thomson Reuters’ publication analysis, Döhner is one of the most cited scientists in clinical medicine.Medi
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A physicist from Ulm is also listed by Thomson Reuters: Prof Fedor Jelezko’s research focuses on colour centres in diamonds, where impurity atoms can be stored and controlled. This is by no means abstract basic research. In fact, it is important for all technologies based on quantum coherence – examples include high-performance sensors, imaging techniques and novel quantum computers. Together with his colleagues Profs Martin Plenio and Tanja Weil (BioQ group), Jelezko was awarded an ERC Synergy Grant worth € 10.3 million at the end of 2012.
The former Head of Ulm’s Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) Prof Jürgen Garche and 
Prof Bruno Scrosati from the Ulm Helmholtz Institute for Electrochemical Energy Storage (HIU) are also listed among the most influential researchers.
A total of 159 German scientists are mentioned in the ranking list, including 21 from Baden-Württemberg. Eight of these are researchers at Heidelberg University. On a par with Ulm University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Hohenheim each have three scientists included on the list. If Profs Garche and Scrosati (honorary professor at Ulm Uni) had counted as Ulm researchers, Ulm University would even have been represented on the list with five researchers.
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