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

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#8351

Nina-Marie Lister

#137359

Overall Influence

Nina-Marie Lister is Professor and Graduate Director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University , where she also leads the Ecological Design Lab. In 2021, she was appointed a Senior Fellow of Massey College. From 2010 to 2014, she was a Visiting Associate Professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her career has spanned private and public-sector work, integrating ecological science with planning and design. As both a researcher and a practitioner, she is founding principal of PLANDFORM, a creative design practice.

#8352

Adam Cheng

#179885

Overall Influence

#8353

Lorna Thorpe

#170287

Overall Influence

Lorna E. Thorpe is an American epidemiologist who is a professor and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at NYU Langone Health. She serves as Vice Chair of Strategy and Planning in the Department of Population Health and on the Board of the American College of Epidemiology.

#8354

Jack Hall

#171078

Overall Influence

1913 - 2003 (90 years)

John Hughes Hall was an American architect and industrial designer working in the Modernist style. Hall is best known for his residential works on Massachusetts' Cape Cod which were designed to nestle within, rather than overtake, the natural landscape.

#8355

Alireza Mehran

#121964

Overall Influence

Dr. Alireza Mehran was chancellor of Sharif University of Technology from 1977 to 1978. Dr. Mehran has a Ph.D. in Biophysics from University of Geneva. He was the Vice-president in charge of planning for the Isfahan Campus, before he was appointed President in 1977. But it was a tough time and fraught with daunting challenges. Dr. Mehran tried to persuade the government to accept alternatives to the relocation of the University to Isfahan, but to no avail. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education excluded Aryamehr University of Technology in Tehran from participation in the country-wide university entrance examination for the academic year 1978-79.

#8356

Charles Wood

#179958

Overall Influence

#8357

Lynette Willoughby

Lynette Willoughby

#170271

Overall Influence

Helen Lynette Estelle Willoughby is a feminist electronic engineer and champion of teaching women about technology, whose career has spanned 50 years. She was a lecturer on microprocessor engineering at Leeds Polytechnic and Leeds Beckett University for 24 years. She was the president of the Women's Engineering Society from 1993 to 1995.

#8358

David Threlfall

#68352

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

David John Threlfall is an English stage, film and television actor and director. He is best known for playing Frank Gallagher in Channel 4's series Shameless. He has also directed several episodes of the show. In April 2014, he portrayed comedian Tommy Cooper in a television film entitled Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This. In 2014, he starred alongside Jude Law in the thriller Black Sea. In 2022, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance in the Martin McDonagh play Hangmen.

#8359

Minerva Yeung

#175536

Overall Influence

Minerva Yeung is an American research scientist and educator best known for her work in video processing, multimedia information systems, and digital watermarking. She was selected as an IEEE Fellow in 2019 "for leadership in multimedia signal processing." Yeung's research and work have been featured in publications The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and Sina News.

#8360

Christian Onof

#180021

Overall Influence

Christian Onof is a British philosopher and engineering mathematician. He is Reader in Stochastic Environmental Systems at Imperial College London and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. He is known for his works on Kantian philosophy. Onof is a co-founder of the journal Episteme.

#8361

Bill Rauch

#41413

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Bill Rauch is an American theatre director. He was named the inaugural artistic director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in 2018. Currently in development, the Perelman is the final piece of the plan to revitalize the World Trade Center site and will create work which inspires hope.

#8362

Jim Marshall

#35569

Overall Influence

1936 - 2010 (74 years)

James Joseph Marshall was an American photographer and photojournalist who photographed musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. Earning the trust of his subjects, he had extended access to his subjects both on and off-stage. Marshall was the official photographer for the Beatles' final concert in San Francisco's Candlestick Park, and he was head photographer at Woodstock.

#8363

Jeanne VanBriesen

#130414

Overall Influence

Jeanne M. VanBriesen is an American civil engineer who is Vice Provost and the Duquesne Light Company Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research considers the realization of sustainable natural and engineered water systems. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Environmental and Water Resources Institute, Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#8364

Tim Blake Nelson

Tim Blake Nelson

#44942

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Timothy Blake Nelson is an American actor and playwright. Described as a "modern character actor", his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in O Brother, Where Art Thou? , Gideon in Minority Report , Dr. Pendanski in Holes , Danny Dalton Jr. in Syriana , Samuel Sterns in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Richard Schell in Lincoln , the title character in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs , and Henry McCarty in Old Henry . He portrayed Wade Tillman / Looking Glass in the HBO limited series Watchmen , for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Se...

#8365

Leonard W. Seymour

#81587

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Leonard W. Seymour is a Professor of Gene Therapy at the University of Oxford's oncology department. As a cancer-oriented translational researcher, he investigates technologies utilised to enhance targeted therapy's delivery and develops related biological therapeutics under the support of Cancer Research UK.

#8366

Eve Sonneman

#112301

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Eve Sonneman is an American photographer and artist. She did a series of similar sequences in color and black and white and for diptychs. Obtained a BFA in painting from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1967. Obtained a MFA from University of New Mexico in Photography in 1969.

#8367

David Mitchell

#132827

Overall Influence

1941 - 2018 (77 years)

David John Mitchell was a New Zealand architect based in Auckland. He presented the 1984 television series The Elegant Shed, and co-authored the book of the same name. Mitchell was awarded the gold medal of the New Zealand Institute of Architects in 2005.

#8368

Nitzan Rosenfeld

#176629

Overall Influence

Nitzan Rosenfeld is a professor of Cancer Diagnostics at the University of Cambridge. He is a Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and co-founder of Inivata, a clinical cancer genomics company.

#8369

Sonia Aïssa

#131405

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sonia Aïssa is a professor in the Institut national de la recherche scientifique of the Université du Québec, in the INRS Research Centre for Energy, Materials, and Telecommunications. Aïssa earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering in 1998 from McGill University, following which she joined the INRS.

#8370

Shalinee Kishore

#166164

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Shalinee Kishore is an American electrical engineer whose research includes wireless networks, network schedulers, and energy management for smart buildings and smart grids. She is Iacocca Chair Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Director of the Institute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure & Energy at the Lehigh University P. C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science.

#8371

Maya Nasr

#172832

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (29 years)

Maya Nasr is a Lebanese postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. She previously received her BS'18, MS'21, and PhD'23 in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research areas include aerospace engineering and international space law, policy, and politics.

#8372

Gavan McDonell

#104387

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Gavan McDonell is an Australian civil engineer, economist and political sociologist in the fields of national infrastructure policy reform, international development and academic education for advanced sustainability studies.

#8373

Valeria De Antonellis

#129486

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Valeria De Antonellis is Professor Emeritus at University of Brescia, Italy, since February 2021. Previously she was a professor of computer science and engineering at University of Brescia, Italy, where she led the research group on "Databases, Information Systems and Web" at Department of Information Engineering.

#8374

Robert Rennaker

#178494

Overall Influence

Robert LeMoine Rennaker II is an American neural engineer. He is a full professor of neuroscience and holds the Texas Instruments distinguished chair in bioengineering University of Texas at Dallas as of January 2015.

#8375

Hiroshi Ito

#180224

Overall Influence

#8376

John Allen

#136889

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

John Edward Allen DEng, DSc, FIEE, FIEEE, FInstP is a British engineer and plasma physicist. In particular, he has directly contributed to international dusty plasma experiments in space under microgravity conditions.

#8377

Jasna Jakobsen

#112819

Overall Influence

Jasna Bogunović Jakobsen is a Norwegian wind engineer who studies the structural loads and aeroelastic flutter caused by wind on bridges and bridge cables. She is a professor in the Department of Machinery, Building and Materials Technology at the University of Stavanger.

#8378

Corina Sandu

#178830

Overall Influence

Corina Sandu is a Romanian-American mechanical engineer, the Robert E. Hord Jr. Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research topics include multibody systems, vehicle dynamics, and terramechanics, the interactions between soil properties and vehicle dynamics.

#8379

Lars Bo Ibsen

#180262

Overall Influence

Lars Bo Ibsen is a Danish professor in engineering at Aalborg University. His research revolves around soil mechanics and bearing capacity to develop foundations of wind turbines for off-shore use. Ibsen developed the bucket foundation, which allows the placing of large wind turbines on soft seabed without harming the wildlife and environment.

#8380

Tod Papageorge

#48787

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Tod Papageorge is an American photographer whose career began in the New York City street photography movement of the 1960s. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and two NEA Visual Artists Fellowships. His work is in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1979 and 2013 he directed the graduate program in photography at the Yale School of Art.

#8381

Namrata Joshi

#56236

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Namrata Joshi is an Indian film critic based in New Delhi. Originally working for Outlook, she remained there from 1999 till 2015, when she joined The Hindu. She won the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 2004

#8382

Kutlu Ö. Ülgen

#143107

Overall Influence

Kutlu Özergin Ülgen is a Turkish biochemical engineer researching pharmacophore modelling to identify pharmacological chaperones used to treat infectious diseases, genetic diseases, and cancer. Ülgen is a professor in the department of chemical engineering at Boğaziçi University.

#8383

Jinhu Lu

#148523

Overall Influence

Jinhu Lu is an electrical engineer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Lu was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2013 for his contributions to complex networks and nonlinear circuits and systems.

#8384

Walter Ziffer

#125634

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Walter Ziffer is a Czech-American author, engineer, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of multiple books, including Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor's Search for God, and has spoken regularly throughout western North Carolina about his experiences in the Holocaust.

#8385

Christina Cogdell

#107144

Overall Influence

Christina Grace Cogdell is an American art historian and educator. Cogdell is currently Professor of Design and Chair of the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on the intersection between architecture and biology, as well as eugenics.

#8386

James H Lewis

#180346

Overall Influence

#8387

Elisa Valero

#174696

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Elisa Valero Ramos is a Spanish architect and professor at the High Technical Architecture School of the University of Granada . Her work has been recognized in 2018 with the Swiss Architectural Award.

#8388

Brian Hooker

#105139

Overall Influence

Brian S. Hooker is a biologist and chemist at Simpson University. He is known for promoting the false claim that vaccines cause autism. Education In 1985, Hooker earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering, from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California. He earned his master's of science degree in 1988 and his doctorate in 1990, both in chemical engineering, from Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington.

#8389

Chai Liyuan

#179938

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Chai Liyuan is a Chinese engineer specializing in metallurgical environmental engineering. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and currently serving as dean of School of Metallurgy and Environment, Central South University and director of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Control & Treatment of Heavy Metal Pollution .

#8390

Merwin Sibulkin

#178077

Overall Influence

1926 - 2006 (80 years)

Merwin Sibulkin was an American scientist active in the field of aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and combustion. Early life and education A World War II Navy veteran, he earned his PhD at California Institute of Technology in 1956.

#8391

Qi Faren

#125775

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Qi Faren is a Chinese aerospace engineer and the chief designer for Chinese spacecraft since the launch of the prototype Shenzhou manned spacecraft in 1999. Qi was born in 1933 in Wafangdian, Liaoning, China, and graduated from the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1957. Qi took part in the research and design of the People's Republic of China's first satellite - the Dong Fang Hong I, which was successfully launched, and stayed in orbit, in 1970. He was then appointed the general designer of China's spacecraft in 1992, following the retirement of Qian Xuesen.

#8392

Shekhar Bhansali

#172221

Overall Influence

Shekhar Bhansali is the division director in Electrical, Communication and Cyber Systems at the National Science Foundation. He also serves as an Alcatel-Lucent Professor and Distinguished University Professor in the Florida International University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Bhansali’s main research interests are in nanotechnology, biosensors, and microfluidics. He holds 40 patents, has published over 300 publications, and has advised more than 40 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows in research. He was elevated to a Fellow of the IEEE in 2023.

#8393

Joe Feddersen

#77253

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Joe Feddersen is a Colville sculptor, painter, photographer and mixed-media artist. He is known for creating artworks strong in geometric patterns reflective of what is seen in the environment, landscape and his Native American heritage.

#8394

Larry Bell

#180418

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Larry Bell is an American architect known for his work in space architecture. He is an endowed professor in the University of Houston's Hines College of Architecture. He is also the founding director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture at the University of Houston, which he founded in 1987, as well as the founder of the Graduate Program in Space Architecture there. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 2011, for instance, he argued that "The climate issue is one of politics, not of science" and that "...climate changes. It has done so for millions of years.

#8395

Ecaterina Andronescu

#112039

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Ecaterina Andronescu is a Romanian engineer, professor, and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party , she sat in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 2008, representing Bucharest, and was a Senator from 2008 until 2020, for the same city. In the Adrian Năstase cabinet, she was Education Minister from 2000 until June 2003. She held the same position in the cabinet of Emil Boc from 2008 to 2009, in the Victor Ponta cabinet during 2012, and finally in the Viorica Dăncilă cabinet for under 9 months between November 2018 and August 2019. She is married and has one child.

#8396

Duan Zhengcheng

#158784

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Duan Zhengcheng was a Chinese industrial engineer and inventor. He specialized in machinery manufacturing and automation, was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and served as a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

#8397

Juan Ignacio Baixas Figueras

#180452

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Juan Ignacio Baixas Figueras is a Chilean architect and designer. Baixas studied architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he teaches. He is a practising architect, and has an architectural firm with his partner, Enrique del Rio.

#8398

Susan Derges

#53148

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Susan Derges is a British photographic artist living and working in Devon. She specialises in camera-less photographic processes, most often working with natural landscapes. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, America and Japan and her works are in several important museum collections.

#8399

Adriana Lita

#65696

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Adriana Eleni Lita is a materials scientist. She works in the Faint Photonics Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where her research has included Bell test experiments and the practical implementation of quantum key distribution. She completed a Ph.D. at University of Michigan in 2000. Her dissertation was titled Correlation between microstructure and surface structure evolution in polycrystalline films. Her doctoral advisor was John E. Sanchez, Jr.

#8400

William Poduska

#156868

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

John William Poduska Sr. is an American engineer and entrepreneur. He was a founder of Prime Computer, Apollo Computer, and Stellar Computer. Prior to that he headed the Electronics Research Lab at NASA's Cambridge, Massachusetts, facility and also worked at Honeywell.

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