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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Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential female people in Engineering,

#1151

Chris Ray

#186067

Overall Influence

#1152

María Eugenia Hurtado Azpeitia

#183581

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

María Eugenia Hurtado Azpeitia is a Mexican architect. She is the coordinator of the Carlos Leduc M. Workstop of the Faculty of Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Biography María Eugenia Hurtado Azpeitia graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico with a Bachelor's and later Master's degree. She began her career in the last year of her university education in the field of landscape architecture on a road and alpine lodge being constructed in Ajusco. After finishing her degree, Azpeitia was invited by architect Carlos González Lobo to work at Espacio M...

#1153

Wang Qi

#185595

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Wang Qi is a Chinese engineer who is a professor at Sichuan University and director of the State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

#1154

Edith Pfau

#72073

Overall Influence

1915 - 2001 (86 years)

Sister Edith Pfau, S.P., was an American painter, sculptor, and art educator known for her religious works and commissions. Born Alberta Henrietta Pfau in Jasper, Indiana, she began drawing at a very early age. Later in her life she recalled, "I always was attracted to faces. I find faces everywhere, even in scribbles on the wall."

#1155

Paula Isabel da Silva Moreira

#81893

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Paula Isabel da Silva Moreira is a neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of Physiology at the University of Coimbra. Moreira is recognized in the field of Alzheimer's disease research particularly for her work on bioenergetics.

#1156

Emma Kendrick

#179379

Overall Influence

Emma Kendrick is Professor of Energy Materials at the University of Birmingham where her work is focused on new materials for batteries and fuel cells. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.

#1157

Jane Alden Stevens

#166111

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Jane Alden Stevens is an American photographer and educator. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted at the ARC Gallery in Chicago, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, NY, and the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Gallery. She has exhibited extensively abroad, including in Finland, Ukraine, Belgium, Germany, and Brazil. Stevens’ photographs are included in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Museu da Imagem e do Som in São Paulo, Brazil. She is Professor Emerita of Fine A...

#1158

Bilge Yıldız

#151532

Overall Influence

Bilge Yıldız is a Professor of Nuclear Science, Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She develops new materials for energy conversion in harsh environments. These include solid oxide fuel cells and corrosion-resistant materials for nuclear energy regeneration.

#1159

Jane Aaron

#88070

Overall Influence

1948 - 2015 (67 years)

Jane Frances Aaron was an American filmmaker and children's book illustrator, best known for her work on Between the Lions and Sesame Street. Aaron mixed live-action shots and animated images to teach children the alphabet, counting skills, and opposites, such as front and back or full and empty.

#1160

Mitra Dutta

#118603

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Mitra Dutta is an Indian-American physicist and electronics engineer known for her research on optoelectronics. She is a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the university's former vice chancellor for research.

#1161

Christen A. Smith

#118139

Overall Influence

Christen A. Smith is an associate professor of anthropology and African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the director of the university's Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. She is also the founder of Cite Black Women.

#1162

Diane Thiede Rover

#177806

Overall Influence

Diane Thiede Rover is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State University. She was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 "for contributions to active learning methods in engineering education".

#1163

Birgit Jürgenssen

Birgit Jürgenssen

#113460

Overall Influence

1949 - 2003 (54 years)

Birgit Jürgenssen was an Austrian photographer, painter, graphic artist, curator and teacher who specialized in feminine body art with self-portraits and photo series, which have revealed a sequence of events related to the daily social life of a woman in its various forms including an atmosphere of shocking fear and common prejudices. She was acclaimed as one of the "outstanding international representatives of the feminist avant-garde". She lived in Vienna. Apart from holding solo exhibitions of her photographic and other art works, she also taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna a...

#1164

Judith Crist

#74258

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Judith Crist was an American film critic and academic. She appeared regularly on the Today show from 1964 to 1973 and was among the first full-time female critics for a major American newspaper, in her case, The New York Herald Tribune. She was the founding film critic at New York magazine and became known to most Americans as a critic at the weekly magazine TV Guide and at the morning TV show Today. She appeared in one film, Woody Allen's dramatic-comedy film Stardust Memories , and was the author of various books, including The Private Eye, The Cowboy and the Very Naked Girl; Judith Crist's...

#1165

Susan Lepri

#184520

Overall Influence

Susan Lepri is an American space scientist and is currently Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. She led development of portions of the Heavy Ion Sensor which was launched onboard the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission in February 2020. She has been director of the University of Michigan Space Physics Research Laboratory since 2021.

#1166

Lei Ge

#186996

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

#1167

Sally L. Wood

#179253

Overall Influence

Sally L. Wood is an engineer at Santa Clara University. She became a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2003. Her research focuses on Image and signal processing, computational imaging and super-resolution, and engineering education. In 2009, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Division of American Society for Engineering Education gave her the Distinguished Educator Award.

#1168

Evon Streetman

#149171

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Evon Streetman is an American photographer. Streetman's primary subject is Florida, where she lives. Life Evon Streetman was born in 1932 in Fort Meade, Florida. From an early age, Streetman was surrounded by artistic people including her maternal grandmother, a painter, her paternal grandfather, a metalsmith and woodworker, as well as her father, a woodworker, taxidermist and craftsman.

#1169

Diana Gannett

#93331

Overall Influence

Diana Gannett is an American classical double bassist and educator, Professor Emeritus of Double Bass at the University of Michigan School of Music. Career Previous appointments include the faculties of Yale University School of Music, Theatre & Dance and Hartt School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Connecticut, Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio, University of Iowa School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and the University of South Florida.

#1170

Robin Selinger

#120172

Overall Influence

Robin Lillian Blumberg Selinger is an American materials scientist. She is professor of physics at Kent State University and the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute. In 2016, Selinger became the first female Kent State University faculty member to be elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

#1171

Maureen Braziel

#169786

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Maureen Braziel was one of the pioneers of Women's Judo competition. She has been thought of as being one of the top Judoka in the United States, and within the 1970s. Competition She won the silver medal heavyweight in the 1971 British Open, and bronze in the open division. She was the first female to place in international competition in Judo. As a result, helped to make women's Judo a sport under the Amateur Athletic Union. Maureen was the women's US National 1st-place winner for the heavyweight division and the grand champion for the years 1974, 1975, and 1976. At a competition weight of 180 lbs, Maureen was strong enough to compete with men.

#1172

Anne C. Roberts

#79724

Overall Influence

Anne Christine Roberts is an American interventional radiologist who is credited with the invention of the Roberts Uterine Catheter , a catheter designed to facilitate navigation through the uterine arteries and currently used widely for uterine artery embolization procedures. She also served as president of the Society of Interventional Radiology and was the second woman to become president of the society.

#1173

Barbara Niethammer

#49582

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Barbara Niethammer is a German mathematician and materials scientist who works as a professor at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the University of Bonn. Her research concerns partial differential equations for physical materials, and in particular the phenomenon of Ostwald ripening by which particles in liquids grow over time.

#1174

Lisa Curran

#56542

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Lisa Curran is an American tropical forester, and Roger and Cynthia Lang Professor in Environment & Anthropology, at Stanford University. Education Curran graduated from Harvard University, and Princeton University with a Ph.D.

#1175

Lois Conner

#111952

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Lois Conner is an American photographer. She is noted particularly for her platinum print landscapes that she produces with a 7" x 17" format banquet camera. Early life Conner was born in New York City in 1951 and grew up in southern Pennsylvania. She dedicated herself to the arts from a young age: learning about photography from her father at 9 years old, apprenticing with a painter as a teenager, and later studying fashion design and taking dance, art, and photography classes in New York City. Conner credits Philippe Halsman, her photography teacher at The New School, for her ultimately cho...

#1176

Teresa Alonso-Rasgado

#181863

Overall Influence

Maria Teresa Alonso-Rasgado is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Dean for Global Engagement in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Queen Mary University of London. She was awarded the Ohtli Award in 2016, the most significant honour of the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. In 2019 she was awarded the Lázaro Cárdenas medal for academic excellence.

#1177

Tracey Holloway

#103099

Overall Influence

Tracey Holloway is the Jeff Rudd and Jeanne Bissell Professor of Energy Analysis and Policy at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences. Her research focuses on the links between regional air quality, energy, and climate through the use of computer models and date from satellites.

#1178

Andrea Lynn Kritcher

#79142

Overall Influence

#1179

Kim Hyunsook

#186640

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Kim Hyun-sook is a South Korean professor of urban engineering at Chonbuk National University previously served as the Administrator of Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency under President Moon Jae-in from February 2019 to August 2020. She is the first woman and non-government official to assume the post since its creation in 2013.

#1180

Lynne Parker

#83957

Overall Influence

Lynne Edwards Parker is Associate Vice Chancellor and Director of the AI Tennessee Initiative at the University of Tennessee. Previously, she was Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer and Founding Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office at the United States' White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is an American roboticist specializing in multi-robot systems, swarm robotics, and distributed artificial intelligence.

#1181

Mary Lynn Realff

#173678

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Mary Lynn Realff is an American mechanical engineer and materials scientist specializing in the mechanical properties of textiles. She is an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech, and co-director of the Georgia Tech Center for Women, Science, and Technology. Beyond her research on textiles, she is also known for her explorations of group work in engineering education.

#1182

Helen Perlstein Pollard

#99115

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Helen Perlstein Pollard is an American academic ethnohistorian and archaeologist, known for her publications and research on pre-Columbian cultures in the west-central Mexico region. Biography As an undergraduate Pollard studied at Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college in New York City affiliated with Columbia University, graduating in 1967. One of her contemporaries at Barnard, who graduated two years earlier, was Esther Pasztory, another Mesoamerican scholar who became renowned as an art historian and specialist in Teotihuacano art. Pollard obtained her PhD in anthropology in 1972...

#1183

Katherine Barbeau

#185709

Overall Influence

Katherine Barbeau is a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her work on trace metals and the linkages between trace metals and biology. Education and career Barbeau graduated from Mercy High School in Middleton, Connecticut. She has a B.S. from Southampton College , and then moved to the Université libre de Bruxelles for one year. She earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1998. Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara until 2001 when she joined t...

#1184

Zenia Kotval

#182927

Overall Influence

Zenia Kotval , is a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Michigan State University, specializing in community engagement and economic development. Education Kotval earned her Bachelor's in Architecture at the Academy of Architecture in Mumbai, India, followed by a Masters in Regional Planning , and a PhD in Regional Planning , at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

#1185

Patricia Coogan

#187784

Overall Influence

Patricia Coogan is Senior Epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center and a Boston University School of Public Health Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. She is a co-investigator for the Black Women’s Health Study , a prospective study at the Slone Epidemiology Center.

#1186

Amanda Petford-Long

#185300

Overall Influence

Amanda Karen Petford-Long is a Professor of Materials Science and Distinguished Fellow at the Argonne National Laboratory. She is also a Professor of Materials Science at Northwestern University. Education and early career Petford-Long studied physics at University College London, graduating in 1981. She earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford in 1985 for research on Beta-alumina solid electrolytes supervised by Colin Humphreys. She was a postgraduate student at St. Cross College, Oxford.

#1187

Susan D. Allen

#183373

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Susan Davis Allen is an American engineering professor and academic administrator. She is currently Associate Dean of Research for the College of Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Her research has spanned multiple applications of lasers and optics, including spectroscopy, laser sensors, laser ablation, micromachining, and others.

#1188

Juliet Gopinath

#187722

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Juliet Tara Gopinath is an American optical engineer who studies the design and synchronization of lasers, diode laser arrays, liquid and variable-focus lenses, and other optical devices, and the properties of optical materials including optical fibers. She is Alfred T. and Betty E. Look Endowed Professor of Photonics and Quantum Engineering in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.

#1189

Corinna E. Lathan

#184734

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Corinna E. Lathan is an American entrepreneur, engineer, and social activist. She is the Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, and Board Chair of AnthroTronix, Inc., a biomedical research and development company headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. Lathan is recognized for her work on digital health software and assistive technology.

#1190

Sheila Benson

#96558

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Sheila Benson was an American journalist and film critic. She served as film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1981 to 1991. Early life and education Benson was born in New York City on December 4, 1930. Her father, Dwight Franklin, was employed as a costume designer and her mother, Mary C. McCall Jr., worked as a screenwriter and novelist.

#1191

Elaine Saunders

#175757

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Elaine Saunders is an associate professor at the Swinburne University of Technology and executive director of Blamey Saunders, as well as an inventor, entrepreneur. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science Technology and Engineering in 2019. She is one of only nine women out of 160 to win the Clunies Ross award for entrepreneurship, and has won many other awards, as well as given numerous keynote addresses on the value of entrepreneurship and innovation in STEMM.

#1192

Gonda Van Steen

Gonda Van Steen

#124454

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Gonda Aline Hector Van Steen is a Belgian-American classical scholar and linguist, who specialises in ancient and modern Greek language and literature. Since 2018, she has been Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, the first woman to hold this position, and Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. She previously held the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, and taught at the University of Arizona and at Cornell University. She has also served as the President of the Modern Greek Studies Association...

#1193

Anne Hardy

#72361

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Anne Hardy is a British artist. Her art practice spans photography, sculptural installation and audio. She completed an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2000, having graduated from Cheltenham School of Art in 1993 with a degree in painting. Hardy lives and works in London.

#1194

Stephanie Schorge

#99135

Overall Influence

Stephanie Schorge is a Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College London. She is known for her research into mutations that cause neurological diseases.

#1195

JoAnne Akalaitis

#13327

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

JoAnne Akalaitis is an avant-garde Lithuanian-American theatre director and writer. She won five Obie Awards for direction and was founder in 1970 of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York City.

#1196

Debbie Lindell

#187860

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Debbie Lindell is the Dresner Chair in life sciences and medicine at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. She is known for her work on the interactions between viruses and their hosts in marine environments.

#1197

Simone Schürle-Finke

#186807

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (39 years)

Simone Schürle-Finke is a German biomedical engineer, assistant professor, and Principal Investigator for the Responsive Biomedical Systems Laboratory in Switzerland. Schürle is a pioneer in nanorobotic and magnetic servoing technologies.

#1198

Anjali Kusumbe

#176756

Overall Influence

Anjali Kusumbe is a British-Indian biologist who is the Head of the Tissue and Tumour Microenvironments Group at the Medical Research Council Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford. She was awarded the Royal Microscopical Society Award for Life Sciences in 2022.

#1199

Elaine Mayes

#34001

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Elaine Mayes is an American photographer and a retired professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Academia Beginning in 1968, she taught at the University of Minnesota, and in 1971 joined Jerome Liebling as part of the founding faculty at Hampshire College, where she taught for ten years. Her students included documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, Michel Negroponte, Roger Sherman, Buddy Squires, Kirk Simon, and Karen Goodman. In 1976, Mayes, and former students Burns and Sherman, founded a production company called Florentine Films in Walpole, New Hampshire. The company's name was borrowed from Mayes' hometown of Florence, Massachusetts.

#1200

Q. Jane Wang

#188155

Overall Influence

Qian Jane Wang is an American professor of mechanical engineering and the Executive Director for the Center for Surface Engineering and Tribology at Northwestern University. She is a tribologist whose research includes work on contact mechanics, lubrication, micromechanics, and solid-state batteries.

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