6 PNNL scientists named among world’s most influential
The national lab in Richland can boast of having six of the most influential scientists in the world.
The 2016 Highly Cited Researcher list from Clarivate Analytics, formerly Thomson Reuters, includes six researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The list features scientists whose citations rank in the top 1 percent within 22 subject areas over the decade ending in 2014. Citations accrue when newly published scientific papers refer back to previously published research findings.
Three of the PNNL scientists were recognized in the geosciences category.
Richard Easter, Steven Ghan and Philip Rasch are developing new ways to understand an important climate issue that poses a lot of uncertainty — the impact of clouds and small particles in the atmosphere as the climate changes.
The particles, both natural and man-made, form the nucleus of clouds, which influence the Earth’s energy balance.
The other three researchers were recognized for contributions in chemistry, materials science and microbiology.
Janet Jansson focuses on the use of molecular approaches to study complex microbial communities, such as those in soil, sediments and the human gut. She was recognized in the microbiology category.
Jun Liu was recognized in the chemistry and materials science categories for research related to materials synthesis, including work to make batteries that are smaller, more efficient, less expensive and even fundamentally different than current technologies. They have applications from cellphones to storing intermittent wind and solar energy.
Yuehe Lin, a Washington State University professor with a joint appointment to PNNL, was recognized in the chemistry category. He studies nanotechnology, particularly the development of new nanobioelectronic devices and nanomaterials for biomedical diagnosis and drug delivery.
This year’s list includes 3,100 researchers.
This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 5:19 PM with the headline "6 PNNL scientists named among world’s most influential."