Seven Illinois researchers rank among the world’s most influential

Seven Illinois researchers rank among the world’s most influential

Seven University of Illinois researchers have been named to the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list for 2015.

The list includes “some of the world’s most influential scientific minds,” according to a statement from Thomson Reuters. “About 3,000 researchers earned this distinction … ranking among the top 1 percent most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact.”

The list is based on an analysis of journal article publication and citation data, an objective measure of a researcher’s influence over the past 12 years.

The highly cited Illinois researchers this year are: civil and environmental engineering professor Tami Bond (highly cited in geosciences), crop sciences and plant biology professor Stephen P. Long (plant and animal science), chemistry professor Yi Lu (chemistry), electrical and computer engineering researcher Richard Masel (engineering), chemistry professor Catherine Murphy (chemistry), plant biology professor Donald Ort (plant and animal science) and materials science and engineering professor John Rogers (materials science and physics).

Long is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the departments of crop sciences and plant biology. He uses computational and experimental approaches to improve photosynthetic efficiency, and works to address the effects of climate change on crop yield. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds in 1976. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2013, and has been recognized by Thomson Reuters as a highly cited researcher in the field of plant and animal science every year since 2005. Long is a member of the Genomic Ecology of Global Change research theme.

Ort is the Robert Emerson Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at Illinois. He joined the faculty in 1978 after earning his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1974. His work focuses on improving plant photosynthesis, and addresses crop responses to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and ground-level ozone concentrations. Ort works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, leads the Genomic Ecology of Global Change research theme at the IGB, and was elected to the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service Science Hall of Fame in 2015.

Read the full list on the illinois.edu website.