Northeastern University scientist Vladimir Torchilin is the world’s second-most prolific researcher in pharmacology and toxicology, according to Times Higher Education, a London-based international publication.

Times Higher Education ranked the world’s top scientists in the field according to publication counts and citation data compiled over the last 10 years by information company Thomson Reuters.

Torchilin, Distinguished Professor of pharmaceutical sciences, published 56 papers in pharmacology and toxicology journals between January 2000 and August 2010. The papers attracted an average of 56.8 citations.

Only a biomolecular chemist at the National Research Council in Italy earned more citations per paper.

To qualify for inclusion on the list, researchers must have ranked in the top 1 percent of their field in terms of total citations and published at least 50 papers within the last decade.

Of his 56 pharmacology-related papers, Torchilin published 11 highly cited and “hot” papers.

Highly cited papers rank in the top 1 percent for total citations when compared with papers published in the same field during the same year. Hot papers are no more than two years old and rank in the top .1 percent in terms of total citations when compared with papers published in the same field during the same two-month time frame.

“This is an unexpected success,” says Torchilin, who estimates that he’s written more than 100 papers over the last 10 years, many of which were published in physical chemistry and biochemical journals.

“There are a lot of good researchers who write papers that I like very much, but it seems that my articles appear a fraction of a step sooner than others on more occasions,” he says.

Torchilin directs the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine and spearheads Northeastern’s Center for Translational Cancer Nanomedicine, which was funded by a five-year, $13.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute.

His current work, which dovetails with Northeastern’s focus on use-inspired research that solves global challenges in health, security and sustainability, focuses on developing drugs that target specific organelles inside human cells in order to maximize the therapeutic outcome.