Media Announcement Friday 4 December 2020

Brisbane’s gut microbiome analysis experts Microba congratulated Co-founders and Senior Bioinformatician on being listed in the 2020 Highly Cited Researchers list for the second year in a row.

Microba’s Co-founders Professors Phil Hugenholtz and Gene Tyson were listed along with Senior Bioinformatician Dr Donovan Parks amongst a list of their peers across multiple research fields.

The highly anticipated list identifies scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication and demonstrate significant research influence among their peers.

The methodology that determines what’s referred to by the organisers as the “who’s who of influential researchers” draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.

Professor Hugenholtz was listed in both the ‘Biology and Biochemistry’ and ‘Microbiology’ fields with a total of 47,020 citations, and Professor Tyson was listed in the ‘Cross-field’ category with 13,207 citations. Dr Parks was also listed in the ‘Cross-field’ category with 16,861 citations in total.

The trio were also listed on the 2019 list, with Professor Hugenholtz’ citations increasing by 6,826 in the last 12 months.

The 2020 list includes 6,389 researchers across 21 fields from nearly 60 nations, with Australia represented by 305 researchers and academics.

Professor Hugenholtz said he was honoured to be named in the Highly Cited Researchers list for 2020 and congratulated Professor Tyson and Dr Parks on their inclusion.

“Congratulations to both Gene and Donovan on being listed for the second year amongst their peers, and also to those listed alongside us in 2020,” he said.

“We have been fortunate to work in fields we are passionate about for many years, and the work we’re doing at Microba will contribute to changing lives globally with gut microbiome-derived diagnostics and therapeutics.”

Professors Hugenholtz and Tyson’s work in investigating the gut microbiome formed the foundation of Microba and drives work forward in the areas of healthcare, research, diagnostics and therapeutics.

In 2019, Microba were awarded the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Award for Product Innovation.

ENDS