Our ranking of biotech's top translational researchers (Table 1) is based on patent analytics firm IP Checkups examination of 2014's most active scientists for patenting. The table also includes each researcher's most-cited patent from the prior five years and their H index (calculated to measure the impact of a scientist's body of published work; higher = more impact). Table 2 lists the most-cited patents overall from the 2010–2014 period, with inventor. Figure 1 breaks the 50 most-cited patents from 2010–2014 into area of focus, revealing, in particular, the rising interest in genotyping and sequencing technologies.

Table 1 Top 20 researchers in 2014
Table 2 Most-cited patents, 2010–2014
Figure 1
figure 1

Focus area for 50 most-cited patents, 2010–2014.