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NTU professors named among world’s most influential scientists

SINGAPORE — Two scientists from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have been ranked among 19 scientists worldwide as part of a report on the most influential scientific minds.

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SINGAPORE — Two scientists from the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have been ranked among 19 scientists worldwide as part of a report on the most influential scientific minds.

They are the only scientists from Asia to make the list.

The two-part report, published by Thomson Reuters, is a citation analysis identifying the scientists — as determined by their fellow researchers — who have made the most significant global impact within their respective field of study.

It includes an 11-year assessment of research paper citations to determine leaders within 21 broad fields of science, and a ranking of last year’s top scientists or “hottest researchers”.

The information firm’s report showed significant growth in cancer genomics and improvements in converting solar cells into renewable energy, said Thomson Reuters in a press release.

The two NTU scientists, Professor David Lou and Professor Zhang Hua, were ranked among the “hottest researchers”.

The ranking was dominated by scientists from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Researchers on the list recently published at least 14 papers with notably high levels of citations. Prof Lou and Prof Hua, ranked eighth and 12th, had 19 and 16 such papers respectively.

Prof Lou is a professor at NTU’s School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. He has had many breakthroughs in the areas of supercapacitors and next-generation batteries, said NTU in a press release.

Prof Zhang, who is from NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering, has developed various types of nanomaterials for applications in biosensing, opto-electronic devices, water treatment and clean energy.

NTU visiting Professor Michael Graetzel, who is from Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, was also on the list in seventh place.

“Authors who are prolific in Hot Papers are clearly producing work that is influential and useful, as judged by the scientific community,” said the report, titled The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

Stacey B Gabriel of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard topped the list for the second consecutive year for her contributions to the United States’ Cancer Genome Atlas project. She provided molecular portraits of tumours afflicting the breast, lung and other areas of the body, and her most recent papers examine the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s.

Oxford University’s Henry J Snaith, a physics and material scientist, was ranked second for his work on perovskite solar cells to advance solar energy technology.

In the other part of the report, a longer-range study of highly cited researchers, NTU and the National University of Singapore (NUS) made the cut.

This study recognised nearly 3,000 scientists who published the most number of articles ranked among the top 1 per cent by citations received in their respective fields in each paper’s year of publication.

Analysts assessed more than 120,000 papers indexed between 2003 and 2013 throughout each area of study.

In the Highly Cited Researchers list, NTU had nine researchers, including Prof Hua and Prof Lou, while NUS had 11 researchers.

The NUS researchers, who included late conservationist Professor Navjot Sodhi, were recognised for the impact of their research in fields such as agricultural sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, and environment/ecology.

President of Thomson Reuters IP & Science Vin Caraher said in a statement: “Citations serve as strong and reliable indicators of the work scientists judge to be most critical to ongoing global research, thus making the highly-cited researchers and hottest researchers a true reflection of the individuals, institutions and nations that are driving the pace of scientific discovery.”

 

CORRECTION: An earlier headline for this story stated that Prof David Lou and Prof Zhang Hua are Singaporeans. This is incorrect. They are Singapore permanent residents. We are sorry for the error.

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