Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Engineering,

#501

Avideh Zakhor

#131797

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

#502

Connie M. Borror

#115659

Overall Influence

1966 - 2016 (50 years)

Connie M. Borror was an American statistician and industrial engineer interested in quality control and forensic toxicology. She was named the winner of the Shewhart Medal of the American Society for Quality shortly before her death, for "outstanding technical leadership in the field of modern quality control, especially through the development to its theory, principles, and techniques", and became the first woman to win the medal.

#503

Xiuping Jia

#122467

Overall Influence

Xiuping Jia is a Chinese-Australian electrical engineer and image processing researcher whose topics of interest include image classification, photogrammetry, remote sensing, and hyperspectral imaging. She is an associate professor of electrical engineering in the School of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian Defence Force Academy campus of the University of New South Wales . She also held an affiliation with the Sino-Australian Joint Research Center for Coastal Zone Management, a joint research project of UNSW with the Ocean University of China.

#504

Rebecca T. Hahn

#132492

Overall Influence

#505

Mia Lehrer

#95337

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Mia Lehrer, born Mía Guttfreund is a Salvadoran American landscape architect. She received a B.A. from Tufts University with a degree in environmental design and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Lehrer is one of the first professionals to incorporate both of her degrees to design sustainable landscapes.

#506

Jessica Winter

#98322

Overall Influence

Jessica O. Winter is an American bioengineer. She is a Professor of Chemical, Biomolecular, and Biomedical Engineering and an Associate Director of the MRSEC Center for Emergent Materials at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include nanoparticles for cancer imaging, diagnostics, and drug delivery; and cell migration in the brain tumor microenvironment. In 2021, she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, and Royal Society of Chemistry.

#507

Susan Krumdieck

Susan Krumdieck

#82179

Overall Influence

Areas of Specialization: Energy Transition Engineering, Antimicrobial Coatings Susan Krumdieck was born in New Zealand. She is currently Professor of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Krumdieck received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1983 from Colorado State University, and her master’s degree in energy systems in 1989 from Arizona State University. She then obtained her PhD in mechanical engineering in 1999 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Krumdieck joined the faculty of the University of Canterbury in 2000.

#508

Arianna Menciassi

#132801

Overall Influence

#509

Xiuling Li

#111533

Overall Influence

Xiuling Li is an distinguished electrical and computer engineering professor in the field of nanostructured semiconductor devices. She is currently the Temple Foundation Endowed Professorship No. 3 in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Fellow of the Dow Professor in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was a Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Interim Director of the Nick Holonyak Jr. Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

#510

Rachel A. Segalman

#111361

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Rachel A. Segalman is the Edward Noble Kramer Professor and Department Chair of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara . Her laboratory works on semiconducting block polymers, polymeric ionic liquids, and hybrid thermoelectric materials. She is the associated director of the Center for Materials for Water Energy System, an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters, and co-editor of the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

#511

Kim Williams

#98050

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Kim Williams is an American architect, an independent scholar on the connections between architecture and mathematics, and a book publisher. She is the founder of the Nexus: Architecture and Mathematics conference series, the founder and co-editor-in-chief of Nexus Network Journal, and the author of several books on mathematics and architecture.

#512

Zelda Fichandler

#63827

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Zelda Fichandler was an American stage producer, director and educator. Life and career Zelda Fichandler came from a family that emigrated from Russia when she was an infant. Her father, Harry Diamond, was a brilliant scientist who created the proximity fuse. Zelda started working in pursuing sciences until the day that she spilled hydrochloric acid down her shirt and burned herself; she decided to pursue acting instead.

#513

Lucy Pao

#130413

Overall Influence

Lucy Ya Pao is an American electrical engineer and control theorist known for her work on controlling and maximizing the energy capture of wind turbines and more generally on the control of flexible structures. She is Richard and Joy Dorf Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.

#514

Judith Chafee

#116970

Overall Influence

1932 - 1998 (66 years)

Judith Chafee nee Davidson Bloom was an American architect known for her work on residential buildings in Arizona and for being a professor of architecture at the University of Arizona. She was a recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome during the middle of her career and was the first woman from Arizona to be named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

#515

Molly Wright Steenson

#104399

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Molly Wright Steenson is an American professor of design and a historian of architecture and technology. Currently, Molly is the president and CEO of the American Swedish Institute. Previously, she was the Carnegie Mellon University Vice Provost for Faculty, K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies, and Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University.

#516

Jenna Jambeck

#75308

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Jenna Jambeck an American environmental engineer who is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Georgia. Her research considers plastic pollution and efforts to address plastic waste. In 2022, she was appointed a MacArthur Fellow.

#517

M. Katherine Banks

#52222

Overall Influence

Margaret Katherine "Kathy" Banks is an American academic, engineer, and was the 26th president of Texas A&M University from 2021 to 2023, only the second woman to hold that position out of 41 total presidents at the time, including her interim successor.

#518

Jennifer Sinclair Curtis

#97871

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Jennifer Lynn Sinclair Curtis is an American engineer. She was the Dean of the University of California, Davis' College of Engineering from 2015 until 2020 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Society for Engineering Education, and American Physical Society.

#519

Marta Molinas

#123855

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

María Marta Molinas Cabrera is a Paraguayan electrical engineer, educated in Japan, who works in Norway as a professor of engineering cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology .

#520

Zoya Popovic

#111348

Overall Influence

Zorana Popović is a Serbian American microwave engineer, currently Hudson Moore Jr. Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado. Popović was named a Fellow of the IEEE in 2002, "for contributions to the development of active antenna arrays and quasi-optical power combining techniques".

#521

Ida Holz

#49221

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Ida Holz Bard is a Uruguayan engineer, computer scientist, professor, and researcher, known as a pioneer in the field of computing and the Internet. Biography Coming from a Jewish family of Polish origin, from age 18 to 22 Ida Holz went to Israel, where she was in the army and on a kibbutz.

#522

Qilin Li

#95500

Overall Influence

Qilin Li is a Chinese environmental engineer who is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. She develops new technologies to analyze and treat contaminated water. Li is a Fellow of the International Water Association.

#523

Christine E. Schmidt

#126631

Overall Influence

Christine E. Schmidt is an American biomedical engineer. As a professor at the University of Florida, Schmidt was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame for her creation of the Avance Nerve Graft which has "improved the lives of numerous patients suffering from peripheral nerve damage."

#524

Greta Magnusson-Grossman

Greta Magnusson-Grossman

#81098

Overall Influence

1906 - 1999 (93 years)

Greta Magnusson-Grossman was a Swedish furniture designer, interior designer, and architect. She was one of the few female designers to gain prominence during the mid-20th century architectural scene in Los Angeles. Her early exposure to European Modernism deeply influenced her later architectural work, seen as a synthesis of European ideals and the culture and lifestyle of Southern California.

#525

Linda McCartney

Linda McCartney

#16050

Overall Influence

1941 - 1998 (57 years)

Linda Louise McCartney, Lady McCartney was an American photographer, musician, animal rights activist, vegetarian cookbook author and advocate, and entrepreneur. She was the keyboardist in the band Wings, which also featured her husband, Paul McCartney of the Beatles.

#526

Martha Gray

#93129

Overall Influence

Martha Gray is a biomedical engineer and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, jointly appointed in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology . Gray became the first woman to lead a department of science or engineering at MIT when she became the co-director of the Harvard–MIT Program of Health Sciences and Technology in 1987. She has developed multidisciplinary programs at MIT. Her research focuses on understanding and preventing Osteoarthritis, and her team developed the imaging technology dGEMRIC, now used to examine cartilage.

#527

Carlotta Berry

#75038

Overall Influence

Carlotta Berry is an American academic in the field of engineering. She is professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She is co-director of the Rose Building Undergraduate Diversity program. She is a co-founder of Black In Engineering and a co-founder of Black In Robotics.

#528

Miho Mazereeuw

#107049

Overall Influence

Miho Mazereeuw is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism in the Department of Architecture at MIT where she also directs the Urban Risk Lab. Mazereeuw is most known for her work in disaster risk reduction.

#529

G. Faye Boudreaux-Bartels

#109336

Overall Influence

Gloria Faye Boudreaux-Bartels is an American electrical engineer known for her work on signal processing, including time–frequency representation, wavelet transforms, and the Wigner distribution function. She is a professor emerita of electrical, computer and biomedical engineering at the University of Rhode Island.

#530

Margaret Allen

#25244

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Margaret Allen is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and an academic at the Benaroya Research Institute. She was the first woman to perform a heart transplant and is a former president of the United Network for Organ Sharing.

#531

Marina Bosi

#83327

Overall Influence

Marina Bosi is a Consulting Professor at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics . Originally a flutist and flute teacher, she is known for her work on digital audio coding formats.

#532

Kathryn Gleason

#75199

Overall Influence

Kathryn Gleason is Professor of Landscape Architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Also a faculty member of the Cornell Institute for Archaeology and Material Studies, her work focuses on the archaeology of landscape architecture, especially the design and interpretation of ancient Roman and Mediterranean gardens and landscapes. Her pioneering field research on archaeological methods for detecting landscape design has been conducted across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, most recently in Italy, Israel, Jordan, and India. She is the editor of A Cultural History of Garden...

#533

Sarah Bell

#61695

Overall Influence

Sarah Jayne Bell is the City of Melbourne Chair in Urban Resilience and Innovation at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Honorary Professor of Environmental Engineering at The Bartlett School in University College London . She works on urban water systems. She was the Director of the UCL Engineering Exchange during her 16 years as a Professor of Environmental Engineering at UCL.

#534

Evelyn Wang

#103646

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Evelyn Ning-Yi Wang is a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where she is the Ford Professor of Mechanical Engineering, director of the Device Research Laboratory, and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Topics in her research include heat transfer, ultrahydrophobicity, solar energy and nanostructures.

#535

Malene Hauxner

#104409

Overall Influence

1942 - 2012 (70 years)

Malene Hauxner was a Danish landscape architect, author, educator and professor of Theory, Method and History at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University . Biography Hauxner was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Her parents were Jørgen Bo and Gerda Rigmor Boisen Bennike. She became a landscape architect after graduating from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in 1968. In 1993 she was awarded a doctoral degree . From 1975 she worked in parallel as assistant professor in retail planning, later as associate professor at KVL. In 1979 she established her own l...

#536

Anna Grassellino

Anna Grassellino

#116053

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (43 years)

Anna Grassellino is an Italian and American physicist, Senior Scientist and, since 2020, Director of the SQMS Center at Fermilab. In 2017 she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by Barack Obama.

#537

Laleh Behjat

#100225

Overall Influence

Laleh Behjat is a professor in engineering at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Biography Behjat completed a bachelor's degree in engineering at the University of Tehran in 1996 and immigrated from Iran to Canada in 1997. She received her Master's degree in electrical engineering in 1999 and her PhD in 2002. In 2002 she was appointed a professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Calgary.

#538

Susannah Hagan

#86371

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Susannah Hagan, FRSA is the founding Director of R_E_D and Professor and School Research Leader at the Royal College of Art School of Architecture. She has written and lectured extensively on the theory and practice of environmental design, in particular, environmentally led urban design. Hagan's major publications include City Fights: Debates on Sustainable Cities ; Taking Shape: A New Contract between Architecture and Nature ; and Digitalia: Architecture and the Environmental, the Digital and the Avant-garde .

#539

Carol Espy-Wilson

#80084

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Carol Yvonne Espy-Wilson is an electrical engineer and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park. She received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987.

#540

Kirsten Moselund

#72489

Overall Influence

Kirsten E. Moselund is a Danish engineer who is a professor of electronics and microtechnology at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. She also leads the Laboratory for Nano and Quantum Technologies at Paul Scherrer Institute. She previously worked as Head of the Materials Integration and Nanoscale Devices group at IBM Research.

#541

Margaret Lucas

#134741

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Margaret Lucas is a Scottish mechanical engineer specializing in vibration analysis and the applications of high-power ultrasound, including shattering and sampling rock in space exploration, under-sea oil and gas exploration, and ultrasonic cutting devices in robot-assisted surgery. She is Professor of Ultrasonics and Head of Systems, Power & Energy Division in the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow.

#542

Jacqueline Chen

#52106

Overall Influence

Jacqueline H. Chen is an American mechanical engineer. She works in the Combustion Research Facility of Sandia National Laboratories, where she is a Senior Scientist. Her research applies massively parallel computing to the simulation of turbulent combustion.

#543

Sandra A. Edwards

#136343

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

#544

Deepa Kundur

#104755

Overall Influence

Deepa Kundur is a professor, researcher at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for "contributions to signal processing techniques for multimedia and cybersecurity."

#545

Elayne Arrington

#78610

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Elayne Arrington is an American mathematician and engineer. She was the first African American woman to graduate with a bachelor's degree from the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. After earning her Ph.D., she went on to conduct performance analyses of Soviet Union aircraft at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

#546

Quyen T. Nguyen

#45242

Overall Influence

Quyen T. Nguyen is an American surgeon-scientist and Professor in the Department of Surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine and associate director of Education and Training at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. She is known for her work pioneering fluorescence guided surgery and co-holds several patents with Nobel Laureate Roger Y. Tsien, PhD pertaining to their invention of peptides, imaging systems and methods to support fluorescence-guided cancer tumor resection and fluorescent labeling of nerves on the surgical bed.

#547

Eugenie L. Birch

#85251

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Eugenie L. Birch is an American scholar and city planner specializing in international and domestic planning history and urban revitalization. Academic posts Birch is the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research and Education and the Chair of the Graduate Group in City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research and co-editor, University of Pennsylvania's City in the 21st Century series.

#548

Tal Arbel

#101259

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Tal Arbel is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at McGill University who specialises in computer vision. She is interested in the application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Early life and education Arbel was born in Montreal. Arbel's father was an electrical engineer. As a child Arbel was given a TRS-80 computer, which she used to play video games like pong. Alongside her computer, Arbel's father encouraged her to play with model planes and Lego. She studied science at CEGEP, before joining McGill University for her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. She completed her Bachelor's , Master's and PhD at McGill University.

#549

Nadine Barrie Smith

#101391

Overall Influence

1962 - 2010 (48 years)

Nadine Barrie Smith was an American biomedical researcher in the field of therapeutic ultrasound and non-invasive drug delivery. She was also an educator and mentor, especially to women students. Personal life Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois to Jean and Barron Smith. The family has deep roots in Japan , associated with the Sekiguchi and Asaki clans. She has two sisters, Arnette Bosch and Jolene Smith. She graduated from Chicago’s Lane Tech High School in 1980. She was married to Andrew Webb in New Zealand. Outside of her scientific career, she was an accomplished sports photographer, equestrian, and mountaineer.

#550

Margaret R. Fox

#40475

Overall Influence

1916 - 2006 (90 years)

Margaret R. Fox was an American electronics engineer and computer scientist. She was the Chief of the Office of Computer Information, part of the Institute for Computer Science and Technology of the National Bureau of Standards from 1966 to 1975 and was the first secretary of the American Federation of Information Processing Societies.

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