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).

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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#7601

Laura Kurgan

#123739

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Laura Kurgan is a South African architect and an associate professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation . She directs the interdisciplinary Center for Spatial Research at GSAPP, which she founded as the Spatial Information Design Lab in 2004. Since 1995, the architect has operated her own New York City based interdisciplinary design firm called Laura Kurgan Design. She has been awarded the Rockefeller Fellowship and a Graham Foundation Grant. Kurgan's work has been presented at prestigious institutions including the ZKM Karlsruhe, the Museum of M...

#7602

Sorin Coțofană

#135847

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Sorin Coțofană is a Quantum & Computer engineering Professor at Delft University of Technology. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2017 for contributions to nanocomputing architectures and paradigms.

#7603

Robert J. Alexander

#31247

Overall Influence

1918 - 2010 (92 years)

Robert Jackson Alexander was an American political activist, writer, and academic who spent most of his professional career at Rutgers University. He is best remembered for his pioneering studies on the trade union movement in Latin America and dissident communist political parties, including ground-breaking monographs on the International Communist Right Opposition, Maoism, and the international Trotskyist movement.

#7604

DeNorval Unthank Jr.

DeNorval Unthank Jr.

#117666

Overall Influence

1929 - 2000 (71 years)

DeNorval Unthank Jr. was an American architect. In 1951 he was the first black man to earn an architecture degree from the University of Oregon . Unthank worked on the courthouse in Lane County, Oregon; McKenzie Hall ; and Kennedy Junior Middle School in Eugene, Oregon. He is the eponym of Unthank Hall at UO.

#7605

Robert Tranquillo

#133730

Overall Influence

Robert T. Tranquillo is an American bioengineer, focusing in cardiovascular tissue engineering, currently the Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, formerly the Shell Land Grant Chair, and is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Society.

#7606

Kevin Greenaugh

#88940

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Kevin Greenaugh is an American nuclear engineer and senior manager at the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, DC, United States. Early life and education Dr. Greenaugh is a distinguished Scientist born in the United Kingdom and raised as a U.S. military dependent. His career has been deeply rooted in both the military and commercial energy industry, showcasing his dedication and expertise. His unique journey began in Berlin during the Cold War, later moving to Augusta, Georgia, where he and his family encountered the challenges of segregation.

#7607

I Gede Wenten

#118646

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

I Gede Wenten, renowned to be called colloquially as Wenten, or Prof. Wenten is an Indonesian Professor of Chemical Engineering affiliated with Bandung Institute of Technology specialized in membrane technology and also an inventor. He is a pioneer of membrane technology research in Indonesia.

#7608

Nick Park

#46485

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts , The Wrong Trousers , A Close Shave and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit .

#7609

Boris Ford

#35510

Overall Influence

1917 - 1998 (81 years)

Richard Boris Ford , was a literary critic, writer, editor and educationist. Early life The son of an Indian Army officer, Brigadier Geoffrey Noel Ford, and his Russian wife Ekaterina, Ford was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, eventually becoming head chorister under Boris Ord. He was then educated at Gresham's School, and through his English master there, Denys Thompson, was introduced to F.R. Leavis under whom he studied at Downing College, Cambridge. Even before graduating, Ford's essay on Wuthering Heights was published by Leavis in Scrutiny in March 1939. Although he came to sh...

#7610

Mark Vargo

#109135

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mark Vargo is a special effects artist, as well as a cinematographer. He was nominated at the 57th Academy Awards in the category of Best Visual Effects for his work on the film Ghostbusters. He shared his nomination with John Bruno, Richard Edlund and Chuck Gaspar.

#7611

Kimmen Sjölander

#106746

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Kimmen Sjölander is professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Bioengineering. She is well known for her work on protein sequence analysis. Biography Sjölander did both her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Computer Science, earning a bachelor's degree in 1993 and a PhD in 1997 under the supervision of David Haussler. She was the chief scientist in the Molecular Applications Group from 1997-1999 and then principal scientist in Protein Informatics at Celera Genomics from 1999-2001, where she was a member of the team who assembled and annotated the Human Genome.

#7612

Richard White

#169205

Overall Influence

#7613

Rosalind Archer

#152816

Overall Influence

Rosalind Ann Archer is a New Zealand academic. She is currently Head of the School of Engineering and Built Environment at Griffith University. Academic career After a 2000 PhD titled 'Computing flow and pressure transients in heterogeneous media using boundary element methods' at Stanford University, Archer moved to Texas A&M University and then to the University of Auckland in 2002, rising to full professor in 2013. In 2013 she also became head of the University of Auckland's Department of Engineering Science. She held the Mercury / Mighty River Power Chair in Geothermal Reservoir Engine...

#7614

Temel Kotil

#148512

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Temel Kotil is an aeronautical engineer and currently the CEO of Turkish Aerospace Industries. Previously, he served as the CEO of Turkish Airlines from April 2005 to October 2016. He graduated in Aeronautical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University with a B.Sc degree in 1983. Awarded a scholarship by the Turkish Ministry of Industry in 1984, he was educated at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor , where he obtained an M.Sc degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1986 and another M.Sc in Mechanical Engineering in 1987 from the same university. Kotil continued his studies there and received his Ph.D.

#7615

David Hajjar

#109250

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

David P Hajjar is an American scientist, university administrator, and professor of pathology and biochemistry at Cornell University. He is best known for his work in arterial cholesterol trafficking.

#7616

Takashi Asano

#169250

Overall Influence

#7617

Diana Aga

#142750

Overall Influence

Diana S. Aga is a Filipino-American chemist who is the Henry M. Woodburn Chair at the University at Buffalo. She was awarded the 2017 American Chemical Society Schoellkopf Medal in recognition of her work in environmental chemistry. The Schoellkopf Medal is a local section award of the American Chemical Society. Over the years, numerous University at Buffalo faculty have received this recognition.

#7618

Philip Ruffles

#107130

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Philip Charles Ruffles is a British aerospace engineer. Born in October 1939, he graduated from the University of Bristol with a first class degree in mechanical engineering in 1961. He joined Rolls-Royce plc, becoming director of engineering and technology from 1997 until his retirement in 2001. He is an advisor to Bladon Jets. He was a non-executive director of Domino Printing Sciences plc.

#7619

Samuel Graham

#139682

Overall Influence

Samuel Graham, Jr. is an American engineer and currently the dean of the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. He was previously the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair and Professor at Georgia Tech. Graham is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and serves on the Advisory Board of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

#7620

Laura Marcu

#164948

Overall Influence

Laura Marcu is an American scientist and a professor of biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at the University of California, Davis. She is also a Fellow of numerous professional societies: the Biomedical Engineering Society, SPIE, The Optical Society and the National Academy of Inventors.

#7621

Caroline Miller

#58568

Overall Influence

Caroline Miller is a planning professor and historian at Massey University, Palmerston North, and is the author of New Zealand’s first book on planning history; The Unsung Profession. Biography Caroline Miller graduated from the University of Auckland with a BA, and entered the planning profession in 1980. She worked for the Palmerston North City Council as a planning practitioner. She became associated with Massey University as a teacher in programmes offered by the Property Studies Programme.

#7622

Alyssa Panitch

#156800

Overall Influence

Alyssa Panitch is an American biomedical engineer. She is a Professor and Department Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Panitch focuses on designing biopolymers that improve tissue healing and regeneration by researching intracellular and extracellular approaches to direct molecular and cellular processes.

#7623

Kevin M Lynch

#169317

Overall Influence

#7624

Ronke Olabisi

#143072

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Ronke Mojoyinola Olabisi is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at University of California, Irvine. She works on speciality of bone and human tissue. She is working with Mae Jemison on 100 Year Starship, an interdisciplinary initiative that is exploring the possibility of human interstellar travel.

#7625

Deniz Başkent

#134552

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Deniz Başkent is a Turkish-born Dutch auditory scientist who works on auditory perception. As of 2018, she is Professor of Audiology at the University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands. Biography Born and raised in Turkey, Başkent trained as an electrical engineer, obtaining undergraduate and MS degrees in electrical engineering at Bilkent University in Ankara. Başkent then moved to Los Angeles, CA, where she obtained a PhD in Biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2003 for her work on "Speech recognition under conditions of frequency-place compression and expansion", under supervision of Robert V.

#7626

Sridhar Condoor

#130018

Overall Influence

Sridhar Condoor is an Indian American academic who is the Chair of the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department at Saint Louis University's School of Science and Engineering. He is a KEEN fellow, a Coleman Fellow, the editor of the Journal of Engineering Entrepreneurship.

#7627

Hong-wei Huang

#169355

Overall Influence

#7628

Kate Snodgrass

#90211

Overall Influence

Kate Snodgrass is an American theater director and playwright. She is the artistic director of Boston Playwrights' Theatre. She is a professor of the practice of playwriting in the English Department of Boston University. Snodgrass won the 2012 Elliot Norton Award for Excellence.

#7629

Jos Boys

#138670

Overall Influence

Jos Boys is an architect, activist, educator, and writer. She was a founder member of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative and co-author of their 1984 book Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment . Since 2008 she has been co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project with disabled artist Zoe Partington, a disability-led platform that works with disabled artists to explore new ways to think about disability in architectural and design discourse and practice.

#7630

Christine Luscombe

#128775

Overall Influence

Christine Luscombe is a Japanese-British chemist who is a professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. Her research investigates polymer chemistry, organic electronics, organic photovoltaics and the synthesis of novel materials for processable electronics. She serves on the editorial boards of Macromolecules, Advanced Functional Materials, the Annual Review of Materials Research and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

#7631

Khondkar Siddique-e-Rabbani

Khondkar Siddique-e-Rabbani

#80073

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Khondkar Siddique-e-Rabbani is a Bangladeshi Biomedical physicist and notable for developing the Focused Impedance Measurement method. In 2008, he was awarded the Academy Gold Medal by Bangladesh Academy of Sciences for his contribution to physical sciences in Bangladesh. Rabbani is the founding chairperson of the Department of Biomedical Physics and Technology at the University of Dhaka.

#7632

Vivian Chu

#128395

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Vivian Chu is an American roboticist and entrepreneur, specializing in the field of human-robot interaction. She is Chief Technology Officer at Diligent Robotics, a company she co-founded in 2017 for creating autonomous, mobile, socially intelligent robots.

#7633

Gillian Howell

#100191

Overall Influence

1927 - 2000 (73 years)

Gillian Margaret "Jill" Howell , was a British architect. Early life She was born Gillian Margaret Sarson, on 3 November 1927 in Multan, in the western Punjab, British India, the daughter of Colonel Edward Vipan Sarson, commandant of the Royal Artillery training centre, and his Norwegian wife, Dagny Sarson. She was educated at the Royal School, Bath, followed by the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

#7634

Marios Papaefthymiou

Marios Papaefthymiou

#77147

Overall Influence

Marios Papaefthymiou is the Ted and Janice Smith Family Foundation dean of the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, United States. He previously served as chair of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. He was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2014 for contributions to the design of adiabatic circuits for high-performance computing.

#7635

Zeng Bing

#169473

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Zeng Bing is an engineer at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Sichuan, China. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for his contributions to image and video coding.

#7636

Mark Griswold

#116651

Overall Influence

Mark Griswold is an American engineer currently Professor at Case Western Reserve University and an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Education He earned his B.S in Electrical Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and his Ph.D in physics at University of Würzburg.

#7637

Frédéric Dufaux

#169505

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

#7638

Jan D. Miller

#97690

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Jan Dean Miller is an American engineer, currently Distinguished Professor of metallurgical engineering and Ivor D. Thomas Endowed Chair at University of Utah. Biography Miller received his B.S. degree from the Pennsylvania State University in 1964, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Colorado School of Mines in 1966 and 1969 respectively. He joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 1968, became a full professor in 1978, a distinguished professor in 2008 and served as chair of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering from 2002–2013. In 1993, he was elected a member the National A...

#7639

Enzo Sellerio

#31777

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

Enzo Sellerio was an Italian photographer, publisher, and collector. Born in 1924 in Palermo to an Italian father and a Russian mother, Sellerio studied law and was for some time a lecturer in law at the University of Palermo. He became a full-time photographer in the early 1950s.

#7640

Bruce Lusignan

#75490

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Bruce Lusignan is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and a visiting professor at Portland State University. He earned his B.S.E.E , M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford. In the early 1960s, he worked in radio astronomy at Stanford. He has been director of Stanford's Communication Satellite Planning Center and Stanford's Center for International Cooperation in Space. He has also owned a small company designing cellular phones and pagers.

#7641

Yi Cui

#105273

Overall Influence

Yi Cui is a Chinese-American materials scientist, specializing in nanotechnology, and energy and environment-related research. Cui is the Fortinet Founders Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and by courtesy, of Chemistry at Stanford University. He currently serves as the director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, succeeding Arun Majumdar and Sally Benson. He has been named the inaugural faculty director of the Sustainability Accelerator within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He also serves as a co-director of the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium, the Battery500 Consortium, and the StorageX initiative.

#7642

N. Jeremy Kasdin

#142333

Overall Influence

N. Jeremy Kasdin is an American astrophysicist pursuing research into the detection and characterization of exoplanetary systems. He is the assistant dean of the engineering school at the University of San Francisco. Prior to this, he was a professor at Princeton University and vice dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is a pioneer of the starshade technique for suppressing starlight to enable the direct detection of Earth-like planets around nearby stars. He is also a recognized authority on orbital dynamics and optimal estimation of physical state, and co-authored the book "Engineering Dynamics: A Comprehensive Introduction".

#7643

Leon Gilmour

#104203

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Leon Gilmour was an American artist, designer, teacher, illustrator and laborer. He is best known for his social realist, wood engravings featuring laborers or California landscape and nature. His work is often associated with the Regionalist artists.

#7644

Donglei Fan

#158457

Overall Influence

Donglei "Emma" Fan is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering of the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and the principal investigator in its Nanomaterials Innovation Lab. In 2014, her team built a nanomotor that was significantly smaller, faster, and longer running than any previously designed. The techniques that they developed have been referred to as a "breakthrough technology". The achievement was noted as a highlight of 2014 in Science Year by Year .

#7645

Mark May

#169610

Overall Influence

#7646

Jaime Correa

#75374

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jaime Correa is an urban planner, architect, and professor at the University of Miami. Correa is a respected authority in the fields of architecture, urban design, and sustainable development. He is the founding principal of Jaime Correa and Associates, the Miami-based design firm, as well as a former founding partner of several other New Urbanism firms in the State of Florida. He is one of the 14 architects and urban planners who instituted the New Urbanism movement in America and one of its most important representatives and critics in Latin America.

#7647

Marcy Zenobi-Wong

#168925

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Marcy Zenobi-Wong is an American engineer and professor of Tissue Engineering and Biofabrication at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology . She is known for her work in the field of Tissue Engineering.

#7648

Paul Memmott

#74708

Overall Influence

Paul Christopher Memmott is an Australian architect, anthropologist, academic and the Director of the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre at the University of Queensland. He is an expert on topics related to Indigenous architecture and vernacular architecture, housing, homelessness and overcrowding.

#7649

Kees Teer

#105027

Overall Influence

1925 - 2021 (96 years)

Kees Teer was a Dutch electrical engineer. He was director of the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium from 1968 until 1985. Career Teer was born in Haarlem on 6 June 1925. He studied electrical engineering at Delft University of Technology and obtained his degree in 1949. On 1 September 1950 he started working for the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium as a scientific employee in the television division under dr. Haantjes. In 1959 he obtained his doctorate at Delft University of Technology with a thesis titled: "Some investigations on redundancy and possible bandwidth compression in television transmission".

#7650

Karen Panetta

#134060

Overall Influence

Karen Ann Panetta is an American computer engineer and inventor who is a professor and Dean of Graduate Education at Tufts University. Her research considers machine learning and automated systems. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the National Academy of Inventors.

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