IIASA experts among the world’s most highly cited climate scientists

Several IIASA experts and collaborators have been recognized in Carbon Brief’s newly released ranking of the 500 most highly cited climate scientists worldwide, underscoring the Institute’s significant contribution to global climate research and assessment.

Leading the IIASA contingent is Keywan Riahi, who ranks 13th overall in the global list. Other IIASA-affiliated names featured in the ranking are Zbigniew Klimont, Joeri Rogelj, Nebojša Nakićenović, Petr Havlík, Michael Obersteiner, Yoshihide Wada, and Volker Krey.

The rankings also recognize the strength of IIASA as a research institution. In Carbon Brief’s analysis of the world’s leading climate research organizations, IIASA is ranked 86th among more than 40,000 institutions included in the Cosmos database. The institutional ranking is based on a publication count that measures how often experts affiliated with an institution appear as authors on climate-related studies. Compiled using affiliation data from OpenAlex, an open-source catalogue of millions of academic publications, the analysis identifies the 500 institutions making the most significant contributions to climate research worldwide.

The Carbon Brief analysis also highlights the central role IIASA experts play in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Carbon Brief’s dedicated IPCC-only rankings, Detlef van Vuuren, a long-standing IIASA collaborator, is ranked first, while Riahi is ranked second. The two have worked together extensively on landmark studies exploring future emissions pathways and climate mitigation scenarios that have informed international climate assessments and policymaking.

Riahi and van Vuuren also serve as leading commissioners of the Earth Commission, an international scientific initiative focused on defining safe and just boundaries for people and the planet.

The ranking further includes several prominent IIASA collaborators and alumni, among them Kristie Ebi, Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington; Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Sandra Díaz, ecologist and Professor of Ecology at the National University of Córdoba: Markku Kulmala, member of Finland’s IIASA committee; former IIASA Director General C.S. Holling; and former Young Scientists Summer Program participants Katherine Calvin and Brian O'Neill.  

The recognition reflects the enduring impact of IIASA’s interdisciplinary research and international collaborations in advancing the scientific understanding needed to address climate change and support sustainable development worldwide.

Read the full list here.