Birzeit University artificial intelligence professor named among most highly cited researchers nationally and globally in recent ranking

Birzeit University stands out in Palestine as home to the only Palestinian researcher recognized in the 2021 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list. Dr. Majdi Mafarja, an associate professor of artificial intelligence, has been named among the world’s most influential researchers in computer science based on the quality and quantity of his publications in the last decade.

The 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list identified only 110 influential researchers in computer science. Overall, the list includes 6,602 researchers from more than 70 countries who produced highly influential publications that pushed forward knowledge production locally and globally.

The annual Clarivate list highlights impactful researchers from around the world whose scholarly efforts helped guide their fields during the last decade, as measured by citations for field and year of publication in the Web of Science index. Researchers whose publications rank in the top one percent as per this measure are considered for inclusion in the list.

Dr. Mafarja said he was proud to be listed in the 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list, noting that this is an achievement for Palestine and for Birzeit University in particular, which, he added, has always been the home of academic and research excellence nationally and regionally. He also thanked his fellow researchers and colleagues for their cooperation and efforts, without which such an achievement wouldn’t have been possible, he added.

Discussing the core aspects of his long-term research, Dr. Mafaraja pointed to delays and inefficiencies in the e-commerce sector, especially the delivery services that they offer. Such issues, he observed, could be managed with the help of AI — Dr. Mafarja’s specialty. He launched a startup, named LogesTechs, that provides a special management system for delivery and logistics companies that can boost their performance using artificial intelligence algorithms.

Dr. Majdi Mafarja holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from the National University of Malaysia. After completing his degree in 2012, he joined Birzeit University’s Department of Computer Science, where he teaches, in addition to leading courses in  two master’s programs in computing and software engineering. Dr. Mafarja published more than 80 research papers in distinguished international journals in partnership with different researchers in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Dr. Mafarja was ranked among the 100,000 most-cited scientists in the world in 2020 and 2021, and he was named among the top 2 percent of his sub-field, as part of a ranking of highly cited researchers produced by experts from Stanford University and Elsevier. In 2019, Dr. Mafarja won Birzeit University’s Distinguished Research Award, and he was recognized as a top researcher in the West Bank for his scholarly efforts.