2023 ‘Highly Cited’ list celebrates UCR faculty influence

Author: Jules Bernstein
November 29, 2023

Only one in 1,000 of all the scientists and social scientists worldwide get included in Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers list. This year, six UC Riverside faculty members made the cut. 

The company, previously part of Thomson Reuters, notes that “this small fraction of the researcher population contributes disproportionately to extending the frontiers of knowledge and gaining for society innovations that make the world healthier, more sustainable, and more secure.”

The 2023 list includes researchers from 67 countries and regions, with the U.S. being home to the largest number of the highly cited. More than a third of the names on the list are from this country, with the second largest proportion coming from China, and the United Kingdom in third place.

Of the 6,849 individual researchers included on the list, David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information said, “Their contributions resonate far beyond their individual achievements, strengthening the foundation of excellence and innovation in research.”

Faculty included on this year’s list are:

Julia Bailey-Serres, University of California MacArthur Foundation Chair and distinguished professor of genetics (plant and animal science category). Her lab seeks to harness genetic mechanisms that provide climate change resilience to crops, particularly flooding, drought, and nutrient stress resilience. Bailey-Serres has been included on the Highly Cited list every year since 2014.

Bruce G. Link, distinguished professor of public policy and sociology (social sciences category). Link is currently conducting research aimed at understanding health disparities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, the consequences of social stigma for people with mental illnesses, and the connection between mental illnesses and violent behaviors. He was also on the 2022 Highly Cited list. 

Timothy Lyons, distinguished professor of biogeochemistry (geosciences category). Lyons’ work explores the evolving oceans and atmosphere, and their roles in the origin and evolution of life. As director of UCR’s NASA-funded Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center, he is known for developing tools to reconstruct ephemeral landscapes of lost worlds using chemical fingerprints locked in ancient rocks. He was also included on the Highly Cited lists between 2017 and 2020, and again in 2022. 

Wei Ren, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (engineering category). Ren’s research focuses on distributed control of multi-agent computer systems and autonomous control of unmanned vehicles. He has been on the Highly Cited list every year since 2014. 

Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology (cross field category). Talbot's laboratory is focused on  tobacco-related diseases, electronic cigarettes, stem cell biology, and video bioinformatics. She has been on the list every year since 2020.

Yadong Yin, professor of chemistry (cross field category). Yin’s laboratory is focused on the synthesis and functionalization of nanostructured materials — a class of new materials with at least one dimension at the nanometer scale. These materials are sometimes referred to as ‘artificial atoms.’ He has been on the Highly Cited list every year since 2014. 

The full list, as well as insights into the methodology for choosing the names included, can be viewed on the Clarivate website, here.