Six LAS researchers rank among world's most influential

Six faculty members in the College of LAS have been named to the 2018 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. They are among the 11 professors selected across campus for this year’s list.

The list recognizes “leading researchers in the sciences and social sciences from around the world,” according to Clarivate Analytics.  It is based on an analysis of journal article publication and citation data, an objective measure of a researcher’s influence, from 2005-17.

The highly cited LAS researchers this year are: crop sciences and plant biology professor Lisa Ainsworth  (highly cited in plant and animal science), chemistry professor Prashant Jain (cross-field), crop sciences and plant biology professor Stephen P. Long  (plant and animal science), chemistry professor Catherine Murphy (cross-field), chemistry professor Yi Lu, and plant biology professor Donald Ort (plant and animal science).  

Others from the U of I Urbana-Champaign campus include civil and environmental engineering professor Tami Bond  (geosciences), materials science and engineering professor Pinshane Huang (cross-field), electrical and computer engineering professor Thomas Huang , bioengineering professor Shuming Nie, and mechanical science and engineering professor Arend van der Zande (physics).

Ainsworth is a U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service scientist and affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Her research uses physiological, biochemical and genetic approaches to understand the mechanisms of plant responses to air pollution and climate change. A key goal of her work is to maximize crop production in the future. She is a University Scholar and a 2018 recipient of the Presidential Award from the Crop Sciences Society of America. She was on the Highly Cited Researchers list in 2016 and 2017.

Jain is the associate head of major projects in the department of chemistry. He investigates light-matter interactions in nanoscale materials. He also is a Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar and an I.C. Gunsalus Scholar. He has affiliations with the department of physics, the Materials Research Laboratory and the Beckman Institute at Illinois.

Long is the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair 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 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2013, and has been recognized as a highly cited researcher in the field of plant and animal science every year since 2005.  He directs Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, a multinational project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research and the U.K. Department for International Development.

Lu, the Jay and Ann Schenck Professor of Chemistry at Illinois, focuses on the design and engineering of metalloenzymes and functional DNA nanomaterials. Specifically, he studies their applications as biocatalysts in alternative-energy applications and as sensors and imaging agents for use in environmental monitoring, food safety and medical diagnostics. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a recipient of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professors Award. He has appeared on the Highly Cited Researchers list every year since 2015.

Murphy is the Larry Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Illinois. Her research focuses on developing diverse nanomaterials for applications in biology and biotechnology for imaging cells, chemical sensing and photothermal therapy. She also studies the environmental impact of nanoparticles and how their chemical properties influence their behavior. She is the associate director of the Materials Research Laboratory and is affiliated with the Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory and with the Beckman Institute at Illinois. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the AAAS, the American Chemical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Ort is the Robert Emerson Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at Illinois. His research focuses on improving photosynthesis and addresses crop responses to global change factors including increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature. He leads the Genomic Ecology of Global Change theme in the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.