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

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#851

Nikhil Koratkar

#39256

Overall Influence

Nikhil Koratkar is the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Endowed Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who has pursued research into one-dimensional and two-dimensional materials and devices. In 2010, he was appointed Editor of the Elsevier journal CARBON.

#852

Chiang C. Mei

#44006

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Chiang Chung "CC" Mei is Ford Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known for his contributions in fluid mechanics with applications to civil, environmental, and coastal engineering.

#853

Edward L. Wilson

#47385

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (93 years)

Edward L. Wilson is an American civil engineer and academic known for his contributions to the development of finite element method. He was the T. Y. and Margaret Lin Professor in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and is professor emeritus, civil and environmental engineering, UC Berkeley. Wilson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of the John von Neumann Award.

#854

Da-Wen Sun

#43832

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sun Dawen , known as Da-Wen Sun, is a Chinese-born professor who studies food engineering at University College Dublin. Professor Sun is an Academician of six academies including Royal Irish Academy, Academia Europaea , Polish Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Food Science and Technology, International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and International Academy of Refrigeration. He is also President of International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering .

#855

Yehoshua Sobol

#13863

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Yehoshua Sobol, sometimes written Joshua Sobol , is an Israeli playwright, writer, and theatre director. Biography Yehoshua Sobol was born in Tel Mond. His mother's family fled the pogroms in Europe in 1922 and his father's family immigrated from Poland in 1934 to escape the Nazis. Sobol is married to Edna, set and costume designer. They have a daughter, Neta, and a son, Yahli Sobol, a singer and writer. Sobol studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, and graduated with a diploma in philosophy. Born to a secular Jewish family, he identifies as an atheist.

#856

Amir Khajepour

#21459

Overall Influence

Amir Khajepour Is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Waterloo. He holds Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Mechatronics Vehicle Systems. He is Co-author of Laser Cladding book published by CRC Press.

#857

Kwabena Boahen

#27700

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Kwabena Adu Boahen is a Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Education and early life Kwabena Boahen was born on September 22, 1964, in Accra, Ghana. He attended secondary school at Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast, Ghana, and at the Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School in Accra, Ghana. While at Mfantsipim, he invented the corn-planting machine that won the national science competition and graduated as the valedictorian of the Class of 1981. He received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering ...

#858

Andrea Goldsmith

#24554

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Andrea Goldsmith is an American electrical engineer and the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. She is also the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, as well as a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Her interests are in the design, analysis and fundamental performance limits of wireless systems and networks, and in the application of communication theory and signal processing to neuroscience. She also co-founded and served as chief technology officer of Plume WiFi and Quantenna Communications.

#859

Chris Toumazou

#40623

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

#860

Gavin Stamp

#19228

Overall Influence

1948 - 2017 (69 years)

Gavin Mark Stamp was a British writer, television presenter and architectural historian. Education Stamp was educated at Dulwich College in South London from 1959 to 1967 as part of the "Dulwich Experiment", then at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained a PhD in 1978 with a thesis entitled George Gilbert Scott, junior, architect, 1839–1897.

#861

Axel Scherer

#27129

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Axel Scherer is the Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. He is known for fabricating the world's first semiconducting vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser at Bell Labs. In 2006, Scherer was named the director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He graduated from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1985. At Caltech he teaches a very popular freshman lab course on semiconductor device fabrica...

#862

Ramayya Krishnan

#7045

Overall Influence

Ramayya Krishnan is an Indian American Management and Information technology scholar from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the dean of Heinz College, and is the W. W. Cooper and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management science and Information systems at Carnegie Mellon University. Krishnan is also a past president of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science .

#863

Martin Vetterli

Martin Vetterli

#43182

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Martin Vetterli is the current president of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, succeeding Patrick Aebischer. He's a professor of engineering and was formerly the president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

#864

Ian Ritchie

#19627

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ian Ritchie is a British architect who founded Ian Ritchie Architects in 1981. His projects include the RIBA Award-winning Susie Sainsbury Theatre and Angela Burgess Recital Hall for the Royal Academy of Music, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, University College London and the American Institute of Architects Award-winning Royal Shakespeare Company Courtyard Theatre. Ritchie was the first foreign architect to receive the French Academie d'Architecture Grand Silver Medal for Innovation.

#865

Sabu Thomas

#25454

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Sabu Thomas is an Indian professor who is serving as the vice-chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. He is also a full professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at the School of Chemical Sciences. He was the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala during the period of 31 August 2017 to 31 August 2018, Director of School of Chemical Science during the period of 1 November 2010 to 31 December 2013. Hon. Director of International & Inter-University Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology during the period of 28 March 2009 to 11 September 2015, 2 February 2016...

#866

Frank Dellaert

#34041

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Frank Dellaert is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also affiliated with the IRIM@GT center and is well known for contributions to Robotics and Computer Vision.

#867

Lionel Kimerling

#49024

Overall Influence

Lionel Cooper Kimerling is an American materials scientist, known for his work in the field of semiconductor materials and their processing. As of 2016, he is the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He headed the Materials Physics Research Department of AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1981 to 1990.

#868

Sabina Jeschke

#19833

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Sabina Jeschke is a German university professor for information sciences in mechanical engineering at the RWTH Aachen University. As of 10 November 2017, she was named member of the management board of Deutschen Bahn AG for digitalization and technology. She is also the director of the Cybernetics Lab IMA/ZLW & IfU. In the summer semester of 2017, she is on sabbatical leave to develop her research in the area of artificial consciousness , and is involved in building a think tank "Strong Artificial Intelligence" at the Volvo Car Corporation in Göteborg. Since May 2015, Jeschke has been a member of the supervisory board of Körber AG, since April 2012 chairman of the board of VDI Aachen.

#869

David Tse

#21482

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David Tse is the Thomas Kailath and Guanghan Xu Professor of Engineering at Stanford University. Education Tse earned a B.S. in systems design engineering from University of Waterloo in 1989, an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1994. As a postdoctoral student he was a staff member at AT&T Bell Laboratories.

#870

George Zames

#18773

Overall Influence

1934 - 1997 (63 years)

George Zames was a Polish-Canadian control theorist and professor at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Zames is known for his fundamental contributions to the theory of robust control, and was credited for the development of various well-known results such as small-gain theorem, passivity theorem, circle criterion in input–output form, and most famously, H-infinity methods.

#871

Buddy Ratner

#36205

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Buddy Ratner is an American professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering. He is the director of the Research Center for Biomaterials at the University of Washington . He is also the faculty member for the Program for Technology Commercialization at the University of Washington.

#872

Alberto Isidori

Alberto Isidori

#51730

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Alberto Isidori was born on January 24, 1942, in Rapallo and is an Italian control theorist. He is a Professor of Automatic Control at the University of Rome and an Affiliate Professor of Electrical & Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He is well-known as the author of the book Nonlinear Control Systems, a highly-cited reference in nonlinear control.

#873

Willis Harman

#7082

Overall Influence

1918 - 1997 (79 years)

Willis W. Harman was an American engineer, futurist, and author associated with the human potential movement. He was convinced that late industrial civilization faced a period of major cultural crisis which called for a profound transformation of human consciousness. Over a career lasting some four decades, he worked to raise public awareness on the subject through his writings and to foster relevant research through the nonprofit research institute SRI International, the Institute of Noetic Sciences , and the World Business Academy . He served as president of IONS for two decades, and he was a cofounder of the WBA.

#874

Antonios Mikos

#43163

Overall Influence

Antonios Georgios Mikos is a Greek-American biomedical engineer who is the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. He specialises in biomaterials, drug delivery, and tissue engineering.

#875

Jipeng He

#52807

Overall Influence

#876

Charles M. Eastman

#21967

Overall Influence

1940 - 2020 (80 years)

Charles M. Eastman was a professor and a pioneer in the areas of design cognition, building information modeling , solid and parametric modeling, engineering databases, product models, and interoperability. He is best known for his work on building description system, which later gave him a title as the 'father of BIM.'

#877

Augusto H. Álvarez

#36045

Overall Influence

1914 - 1995 (81 years)

Augusto Harold Álvarez García was a Mexican Modernist architect. Biography Álvarez was student of José Villagrán García. He taught at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México , where the computer laboratory is named after him. He was founder of the school of architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana, and was its first director.

#878

Antonia Terzi

#44832

Overall Influence

1971 - 2021 (50 years)

Antonia Terzi was an Italian aerodynamicist who worked for the Ferrari and Williams Formula One teams. Education Terzi held a Master's degree in Materials Engineering from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy and a PhD in engineering, focused on aerodynamics, from University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

#879

Joseph Esherick

#31790

Overall Influence

1914 - 1998 (84 years)

Joseph Esherick was an American architect. Architectural career Joseph Esherick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 with a bachelor's degree in architecture. Esherick worked for San Francisco Bay Area architect Gardner Dailey, and, about 1950, began his own practice in the Bay Area. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley for many years. Esherick was awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 1989.

#880

Avinash Kak

#12150

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Avinash C. Kak is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University who has conducted pioneering research in several areas of information processing. His most noteworthy contributions deal with algorithms, languages, and systems related to networks , robotics, and computer vision. Born in Srinagar, Kashmir, he did his Bachelors in BE at University of Madras and Phd in Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1971.

#881

Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil

#32535

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil is an Egyptian architect who designed over 15 mosques in Saudi Arabia and is considered by many as the foremost contemporary authority in Islamic architecture. For designing in traditional styles, he is also a representative of New Classical Architecture.

#882

Vladimír Mařík

#34446

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Vladimír Mařík is a Czech scientist. Education Mařík received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Control Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1975 and 1979, respectively. Career Mařík was appointed Full Professor at the Czech Technical University in 1990. He acted as the head of the Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University since 1999 when he established the Department until 2013.

#883

Wolt Fabrycky

#41252

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Wolter Joseph Fabrycky is an American systems engineer, Lawrence Professor Emeritus of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech, and Principal of Academic Applications International. Biography Wolter Fabrycky studied Industrial Engineering, receiving his BS in 1957 from Wichita State University and his Industrial Engineering MS in 1958 from the University of Arkansas. In 1962 Fabrycky received his PhD in engineering from Oklahoma State University where he was awarded an Ethyl Corporation Doctoral Fellowship.

#884

William Jeffery Sandborn

#53299

Overall Influence

#885

Boris Podrecca

#35531

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Boris Podrecca is a Slovene-Italian architect and urban designer living in Vienna, Austria. Podrecca is considered by some critics a pioneer of postmodernism. With some of his early works, such as the neuro-physiological institute at Stahremberg Palace , he took a new, more tolerant attitude towards historical architectural forms.

#886

Eric Baer

#19579

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Eric Baer, is an American scientist and engineer known for his major research and educational contributions to polymer science and engineering. He is a leading pioneer in understanding the complex relationships between solid state structure, processing, and properties of polymeric materials and systems.

#887

Malcolm Quantrill

#30598

Overall Influence

1931 - 2009 (78 years)

Malcolm Quantrill was a British architect, academic and architecture theorist. His best known books are The Environmental Memory – Man and Architecture in the Landscape of Ideas and Finnish Architecture and the Modernist Tradition . He was a specialist in the history of the modern architecture of Finland. He was the first person to write critical monographs in any language on three individual Finnish modernist architects, Alvar Aalto – Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study – Reima Pietilä – Reima Pietilä: Architecture, Context, Modernism – and Juha Leiviskä – Juha Leiviska and the Continuity of Finnish Modern Architecture .

#888

John G. Proakis

#53399

Overall Influence

#889

John Piper

#7162

Overall Influence

1903 - 1992 (89 years)

John Egerton Christmas Piper CH was an English painter, printmaker and designer of stained-glass windows and both opera and theatre sets. His work often focused on the British landscape, especially churches and monuments, and included tapestry designs, book jackets, screen-prints, photography, fabrics and ceramics. He was educated at Epsom College and trained at the Richmond School of Art followed by the Royal College of Art in London. He turned from abstraction early in his career, concentrating on a more naturalistic but distinctive approach, but often worked in several different styles thr...

#890

Akhlesh Lakhtakia

#30412

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Akhlesh Lakhtakia is Evan Pugh University Professor and Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of engineering science and mechanics at the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on electromagnetic fields in complex materials, such as sculptured thin films, chiral materials, bianisotropy and industrially scalable bioreplication, an emerging form of engineered biomimicry applied to harvesting of solar energy and pest eradication. His technique for visualization of latent fingerprints was covered in the NOVA documentary series "Forensics on Trial".

#891

Åke Öberg

#22135

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Per "Åke" Öberg, born 1937 in Härnösand, is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University, Sweden. Öberg received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1964 from Chalmers University of Technology and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 1971 from Uppsala University. In 1963-1972 he worked as a Research Associate at Uppsala University. He is since 1972 Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University. He is also active at the Linköping University Hospital.

#892

Dimitris Anastassiou

#14635

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Dimitris Anastassiou is an electrical engineer and Charles Batchelor Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Columbia University School of Engineering. Anastassiou's earlier work focuses primarily on signal and information processing and reverse engineering. His more recent work involves interdisciplinary research, specifically in systems biology, with investigators at Columbia University Medical Center. Anastassiou is Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to video technology, developing high-performance digital image and video coding techniques . He is also a Fellow of the National Academy ...

#893

Oliver McGee

#41457

Overall Influence

1957 - 2020 (63 years)

Oliver George McGee III was an American analyst, strategist, professor of engineering, and author in the United States. He wrote about his switch from being a Democrat to a Republican and about being a Republican in the "age of Obama" in his book Jumping the Aisle. He provided public advocacy on capital, technology, and U.S. competitiveness strategies for several political campaigns including Hillary for President 2008, McCain-Palin 2008, Romney-Ryan 2012, and Trump-Pence 2016 campaigns.

#894

Harry Atwater

#44474

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Harry Albert Atwater, Jr. is an American physicist and materials scientist and is the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the division of engineering and applied science at the California Institute of Technology. Currently he is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and the director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance , a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels. Atwater's scientific effort focuses on nanophotonic light-matter interactions and solar energy conversion. His current research in energy centers on high efficiency photovoltaics, carbon capture and removal, and photoelectrochemical processes for generation of solar fuels.

#895

Rafael L. Bras

#28809

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rafael Luis Bras is a Puerto Rican civil engineer best known for his contributions in surface hydrology and hydrometeorology, including his work in soil-vegetation-atmosphere system modeling. Bras served as the provost and executive vice president of Academic Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 2010 to 2020 with faculty appointments in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and continues to be a professor at Georgia Tech.

#896

Preston Scott Cohen

#26302

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Preston Scott Cohen is a professor of Harvard Graduate School of Design . In 2004, he established a partnership with two registered architects, Amit Nemlich and Gilles Quintal, and became the Design Principal of Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. based in Central Square Cambridge, Massachusetts. Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. is renowned for the design of cultural, educational, commercial buildings and urban design projects around the world. Projects include the Sarmiento Performing Arts Center in Bogota, Colombia; a new building for Taubman College at the University of Michigan; the Taiyuan Museum of Art i...

#897

Tom Duff

#4473

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff is a computer programmer. Early life Duff was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and was named for his putative ancestor, the fifth Earl of Selkirk. He grew up in Toronto and Leaside. In 1974 he graduated from the University of Waterloo with a B.Math and, two years later, was awarded an M.Sc. from the University of Toronto.

#898

Qazi Azizul Mowla

#29361

Overall Influence

Qazi Azizul Mawla is a Bangladeshi architect, urban designer, and academic. He is vice-chancellor of the Leading University of Bangladesh. Previously, he was head of the Department of Architecture, BUET and founding chairperson of the Department of Architecture, Khulna University. Mowla is renowned for his curricular consultancy.

#899

James Thorp

#23618

Overall Influence

1937 - 2018 (81 years)

James S. Thorp was the head of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. He was the Hugh P. and Ethel C. Kelly Professor Emeritus & Research Professor. He received all his degrees from Cornell University. Professor Thorp was a teacher, a researcher, and for many years served as the director, in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell, where he worked for 42 years, 1962-2004.

#900

Udo Weilacher

#30616

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Dr. Udo Weilacher is a German landscape architect, author and Professor for Landscape Architecture. Biography Udo Weilacher was educated as a gardener in 1984. He studied landscape architecture at the Technical University of Munich-Weihenstephan and at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona between 1986 and 1993. At the Technical University of Munich he received his diploma from the German landscape architect and professor Peter Latz. At the University of Karlsruhe and the ETH Zürich where he worked as a scientific assistant and a lecturer until 2002, it was the renowned Swiss landscape architect Dieter Kienast, who influenced Weilacher in his practical and theoretical work.

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