Numerous Wyss faculty members are included in this year’s Highly Cited Researchers™ and Top Translational Researchers lists
(BOSTON) — Web of Science Group has announced its Highly Cited Researchers 2020 list, which identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™ citation index. The Wyss Institute at Harvard University is delighted that ten of its faculty members are included on this year’s list, listed below by award category.
Biology and Biochemistry
George Church, Ph.D., Core Faculty Member
James Collins, Ph.D., Core Faculty Member
Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director and Core Faculty Member
Chemistry
George Whitesides, Ph.D., Wyss Associate Faculty Member
Cross-Field
Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., Associate Faculty Member
Jennifer A. Lewis, Sc.D., Core Faculty Member
David Mooney, Ph.D., Core Faculty Member
David Weitz, Ph.D., Core Faculty Member
Engineering
Robert Wood, Ph.D., Associate Faculty Member
Pharmacology and Toxicology
Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., Core Faculty Member
While researchers from over 60 countries have been recognized this year, Harvard University leads as the institution with the greatest number of honorees, at 188 total.
Three Wyss faculty members have also been named on the Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2019 list compiled by Nature Biotechnology: George Church, Donald Ingber, and David Weitz. The list is based on the number of patents granted to academic researchers over the previous year, as well as the impact of their publications.
“The Wyss Institute is only one year older than the ten-year time period considered for the Highly Cited Researchers list, and thus, the fact that so many of our members have been ranked as top influencers in their fields is a testament to our commitment to top-quality science and engineering. Equally strong is our commitment to drive innovation and progress in the real world via the commercialization of our technologies, so it is gratifying to see that our faculty are also highly productive in that realm as well, ” said Ingber, who in addition to being one of the highly cited researchers is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School, the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “We are enormously proud of this year’s faculty honorees, and are lucky to have them as colleagues.”
Since 2014 Clarivate Analytics, which maintains the Web of Science index, has been pinpointing individual researchers with outsized influence in their fields based on the frequency with which their work is cited in the scientific literature. Tracing publication citations can help reveal which ones impact a given field most. This year’s list continues to recognize researchers whose citation records position them in the very highest strata of influence and impact, as it includes 26 Nobel laureates, including three announced this year, as well as 66 Clarivate Analytics Citation Laureates™ – individuals who, through citation analysis, have been identified as researchers “of Nobel class” and potential Nobel Prize recipients.
David Pendlebury, Senior Citation Analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information, said: “In the race for knowledge, it is human capital that is fundamental and this list identifies and celebrates exceptional individual researchers who are having a great impact on the research community as measured by the rate at which their work is being cited by others.”