Thomson Reuters' ScienceWatch newsletter has released its list of hottest researchers for 2011. As he did for 2010, the Broad Institute's Eric Lander tops the list, having co-authored 14 of the year's "hot papers," ScienceWatch's Christopher King says. "Lander … has become a virtual fixture on this annual roster, with this year marking his eighth appearance," King adds. The hot papers are ranked according to the number of citations. McMaster University's Salim Yusuf, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute's Michael Stratton, Andrew Futreal, and Peter Campbell round out the top five. US National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins took ninth place, with 10 hot papers.
Further, Thomson Reuters ranks genetics as the hottest field of study, as it is the primary field for seven of the 15 hottest researchers. And Nature published the greatest number of hot papers.