The Department of Management Science and Technology (MST) of the Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU) has achieved an important international distinction, as, for the first time, a member of the Department has been included in the internationally recognised “World’s Top 2% Scientists” list associated with Stanford University and Elsevier. The distinction concerns the Chair of the Department, Professor Kostas Panagiotakis.
The distinction refers to the career-long list, which assesses overall scientific contribution and impact on global research throughout a researcher’s career, using data through 2025. It therefore reflects the long-term impact of a researcher’s scientific work rather than performance during a single year.
Professor Panagiotakis has been recognised in his primary research field, Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing, ranking within the top 1.92% among 517,648 researchers worldwide in one of the largest and most competitive scientific fields internationally. His research focuses on pattern recognition, image and video analysis, and recommender systems, while in recent years it has also expanded into remote-sensing applications, including flood and tree detection from aerial imagery, through the supervision of PhD candidates in the Department.
At the same time, Professor Panagiotakis is completing eight years as Department Chair in Agios Nikolaos. Among the most significant milestones during this period are the establishment of the Department of Management Science and Technology in 2019, the launch in 2021 of the tuition-free Master’s Programme “Management and Digital Transformation”, and the inclusion of the Department in the 2nd Scientific Field in 2024.
The Stanford list
The 2026 edition of the database was published on 7 October 2026 and is compiled by the research team of Professor John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford University, with the data published in the Elsevier Data Repository and based on information from the Scopus database.
The ranking is based on a composite indicator, the c-score, which focuses on the bibliometric impact of scientific work and takes into account, among other factors, citations, co-authorship and an author’s position in scientific publications. The database includes the 100,000 scientists with the highest c-scores, as well as researchers who rank within the top 2% of their scientific subfield.
Two separate datasets are published: one reflecting the long-term impact of scientific work throughout a researcher’s career (career-long) and another reflecting impact during the most recent reference year (single recent year).
A total of 12 HMU faculty members are included in this year’s career-long list, compared with nine last year, including, for the first time, a Professor from the Department of Management Science and Technology in Agios Nikolaos. Their presence highlights the international research reach and steadily growing research profile of the Hellenic Mediterranean University.
A Department on a steadily upward trajectory
This year’s distinction adds to a series of achievements by HMU’s Department of Management Science and Technology. In 2025, two members of the Department — the Department’s Vice-Chair, Associate Professor Georgios Mastorakis, and Professor Panagiotakis — were ranked among the top 2% of academics worldwide according to ScholarGPS, while four additional faculty members of the Department were ranked within the top 5%.
The Department ranks second in Greece in research performance among 34 regional university departments in economics-related disciplines and first in Crete in terms of its upward trajectory. It has received accreditation with six “Excellent” ratings for both its undergraduate programme and its tuition-free Master’s Programme “Management and Digital Transformation”, while 21 PhD candidates are currently enrolled in its doctoral programme.
The inclusion of the Department Chair in this year’s Stanford/Elsevier database adds to the research distinctions achieved by HMU’s Department of Management Science and Technology and highlights its presence in cutting-edge scientific fields, including Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing.
Source: Ioannidis, John P.A. (2026), “August 2026 data-update for ‘Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators’”, Elsevier Data Repository, V9, doi: 10.17632/btchxktzyw.9
https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/9
