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Professor Des HIggins, UCD. Jason Clarke Photography
influential mind

This professor is the most highly cited Irish scientist of all time

Professor Des Higgins was named the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds this year.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN Professor Des Higgins wrote one of the top 10 most cited research papers, making him the most highly cited Irish scientist, and amongst the most highly cited scientists in the world.

The research paper, which set the international standard for DNA sequence analysis, has been cited over 100,000 times by other scientists and is listed in the latest edition of Nature News on the top 100 most cited research publications. 

Top 10 

Professor Des Higgins, a Professor of Bioinformatics at the UCD Conway Institute, UCD and a Principal Investigator at Systems Biology Ireland, is the only Irish scientist included in the top 10. He also has a second paper in the top 30.

He has been working in the areas of bioinformatics and molecular evolution since 1985, predominantly on methods and software for DNA and protein sequence alignment.

unnamed (13) Prof. Des Higgins, Professor of Bioinfomatics at the Conway Institute, UCD. Jason Clarke Photography Jason Clarke Photography

In 1988 he developed the original Clustal programme for aligning protein sequences, which has made an exceptional impact in the field.

The programme he developed allowed the algorithm designed to work on personal computers, which greatly increased its use among scientists and has meant it could be used in laboratories everywhere. Today it is considered the industry standard.

Professor Higgins has published 10 papers with over 1,000 citations. Earlier this year he was named on Thomson Reuters’ list of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014.

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