BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Researchers at the University at Buffalo are pleased -- but not surprised -- that a recent national study of "hot spots" for scientific disciplines ranks Buffalo as one of the state's top cities for physics and chemistry. An additional ranking found that UB's Department of Chemistry is among the best in the nation.

"These kinds of rankings indicate to me that UB's investments in these areas through the UB 2020 strategic strengths plan are clearly paying off," says Alexander N. Cartwright, PhD, UB vice president for research. "It validates the fact that indeed, these areas are among our best strengths."

Cartwright points to the development of the strategic strengths in Integrated Nanostructured Systems and in Molecular Recognition in Biological Systems and Bioinformatics; in each of these areas, research by UB chemists and physicists plays a leading role.

The study on hot science cities that was publicized in Technology Review, is based on citations from peer-reviewed papers from 2008 to February 2011 from Scopus, a large citation and abstract database. It uses Google Maps to identify cities that are home to authors who publish significantly more top-cited papers than their peers.

The study shows a significant amount of activity in Buffalo in terms of top-cited papers in physics and chemistry.

"According to this study, the upstate cities that exhibit this level of activity for both physics and chemistry are Buffalo, Rensselaer and Ithaca," he says.

Cartwright adds that a recent listing of the top 100 chemistry departments in the world, published by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranks UB's Department of Chemistry as one of the top 44 chemistry departments in the U.S. for 2010. That ranking is based in part on the number of articles published in top international journals and the number of highly cited researchers.

"Research is a seed," says Cartwright. "You need that seed for technical advancement. That translates into new breakthroughs, more research funding and new technologies that can be translated to economic development. We clearly have some of the best minds in science here at UB."