Unnur Þorsteinsdóttir, Vice President of Research at deCODE genetics and the new Dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of Iceland, is the most influential female scientist in Europe and the fifth most influential in the world. This is according to a new list compiled by Research.com, based on an analysis of the research output of over 160,000 female scientists.
Research.com is a platform for sharing information about research, scientific conferences and researchers. As well as discussing science in a broad sense, the website regularly publishes various rankings of outstanding journals, researchers and conferences in different fields.
The website has now published its first list of the world's leading female researchers, aiming to showcase women's achievements in a profession that has long been male dominated. The goal is also to inspire female scholars and young women considering an academic career. The website points out that only a third of people employed in scientific research are women and that female researchers are given less credit than their male peers, being less likely to be named on patents or articles.
The list of the world's best female scientists is based on data from Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Graph. The website examined the profiles of over 166,000 female scientists across 24 disciplines, considering factors such as the h-index, which is based on both publications and citations. Consideration was also given to the proportion of contributions made within the given discipline and the awards and achievements of the scientists. The outcome is a ranking of the top 1,000 most influential female scientists in the world.
Almost 190,000 citations
Unnur Þorsteinsdóttir was appointed to the position of Dean of the School of Health Sciences this summer. Since 2000, she has worked at decODE genetics, where she conducts genetic research, looking at such topics as cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease and cancer. Alongside her work at deCODE genetics, Unnur has been a research professor at the University of Iceland Faculty of Medicine since 2007.
Research.com reports that Unnur's research has been cited almost 190,000 times and she has produced around 460 publications during the period considered. These achievements put her in fifth place in a ranking of the world's top female scientists and first place for Europe. Unnur Þorsteinsdóttir is also the only Icelandic scientist to be featured on this year's list.
The list of the best female scientists in the world can be found on Research.com.
Unnur Þorsteinsdóttir
Unnur completed a BS in biology from the University of Iceland in 1984 and a diploma in teaching studies for upper secondary school teachers in 1987. She completed a PhD in molecular biology from the University of British Columbia in 1997. From 1997 to 2000 she held a position as postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montreal in Canada. Since 2000, she has worked at deCODE genetics and also became Dean of the School of Health Sciences on 1 July this year. The School of Health Sciences is one of five schools at the University of Iceland.
Unnur has sat on numerous boards and committees, including the specialist council of the Research Fund for Health and Life Sciences 2002-2006, the Science and Technology Policy Council 2009-2012, and the board of the Rannís Research Fund 2004-2008 and 2012-2016. She chaired the board of the Markáætlun á sviði vísinda, tækni og nýsköpunar in 2013. She has also sat on doctoral committees, served as opponent at doctoral defences and supervised PhD students. Furthermore, she has received a large number of acknowledgements for her work and research, including the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Falcon for her contributions to the field of genetic research and science in 2017.