About Connect51

Powering global connections in higher education

We built Connect51 to give universities, governments, and researchers the evidence to raise research impact — openly and reproducibly.

Our story

Connect51 began with a simple conviction: that the global research record holds the answers to how institutions rise — if only it were usable.

We set out to turn the open OpenAlex corpus of 46M+ works into a platform any research office could act on, replacing slow, opaque consulting with transparent, self-service intelligence.

Today Connect51 helps institutions benchmark their strengths, choose partners on evidence, and grow the collaborations that lift citations and rankings.

The team

Simone Dilena

Simone Dilena

Co-founder

Simone leads Connect51's product and research strategy, translating two decades in higher-education analytics into a platform that helps institutions act on their data.

simone@connect51.com
Todd Hornal

Todd Hornal

Co-founder

Todd drives Connect51's data engineering and methodology, turning the global OpenAlex corpus into reliable, reproducible research intelligence.

todd@connect51.com

Let's lift your research impact

Book a demo and see what Connect51 can do with your data.