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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School

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List of the most influential people in Engineering,

#2001

Daniel Gajski

#37035

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Daniel Gajski is a Professor of the School of Information and Computer Science and the School of Engineering at University of California, Irvine, United States. He was previously the Director for the Center for Embedded Computer Systems , now known as the Center for Embedded and Cyber-physical Systems.

#2002

William W. Mullins

William W. Mullins

#86261

Overall Influence

1927 - 2001 (74 years)

William Wilson Mullins was an American physicist and materials scientist who worked for many years as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Mullins was born on March 5, 1927, in Boonville, Indiana, where his father was an industrialist and mayor; his uncle, George W. Mullins, was a mathematician at Columbia University. He was raised in Chicago after the family moved there in 1930. He was educated at the Lab School of the University of Chicago, served two years in the U.S. Navy, and then earned a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, all in physics, in 1949, 1951, and 1955 respectively.

#2003

Lars Löfgren

#51188

Overall Influence

Lars Löfgren is a Swedish cybernetician. He was awarded the Wiener Gold Medal by the American Society for Cybernetics in 2008. Lars Löfgren was involved in extending the logical and linguistic approaches to various problems raised by early cybernetics. His work helped develop a more consistent conceptual base for cybernetics through a holistic approach to second order cybernetics.

#2004

Robert S. Swarz

#75628

Overall Influence

Robert S. Swarz is the former co-director of the Systems Engineering Practice Office of MITRE Corporation and currently Professor of Practice in the systems engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he has been teaching for over 30 years and held the post of Chair of the Systems Engineering Advisory Council. He is a co-author of a classic text in computer reliability and fault-tolerant systems.

#2005

David C. Coleman

#87599

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

#2006

Liang Shoupan

#50713

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Liang Shoupan was a Chinese aerospace engineer. The chief designer of China's first generation of anti-ship missiles including the HY-1 and HY-2, he is regarded as the "father of China's cruise missile program". He also designed the C-101, C-801 and other missiles. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2006, he was one of the five scientists who received the Highest Achievement Award of China's aerospace industry.

#2007

Galen Cranz

#34605

Overall Influence

Galen Cranz is a Professor of the Graduate School, Architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the social and cultural bases of architectural and urban design. She is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, a kinesthetic educational system, who founded the new field "Body Conscious Design."

#2008

Hajime Narukawa

#68335

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Hajime Narukawa is a Japanese architect. He was born in 1971 in Kawasaki, Kanagawa and lives and practices in Tokyo. Biography Narukawa graduated in 1994 from the Shibaura Institute of Technology, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts with a master's degree in 1996, and the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam with a master's degree in 1999. In 1994 his "Golden Gai Theater" won the Gold Medal in the Japan Institute of Architects competition for newly graduated architects. In the same year he began his research on geometrical theory. In 1996 his "Tensegrity Modeling Manual" was awarded the Salon de ...

#2009

Kwak Kyung-sup

#75810

Overall Influence

Kyung Sup Kwak is a South Korean electrical engineer, a professor in the Graduate School of Information Technology and Telecommunication at Inha University, South Korea. Kwak did his undergraduate studies at Inha University, earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1977. He received a master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1981, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1988. He was president of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences in 2006.

#2010

Matti Pietikäinen

#87007

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Matti Kalevi Pietikäinen is a computer scientist. He is currently Professor in the Center for Machine Vision and Signal Analysis, University of Oulu, Finland. His research interests are in texture-based computer vision, face analysis, affective computing, biometrics, and vision-based perceptual interfaces. He was Director of the Center for Machine Vision Research, and Scientific Director of Infotech Oulu.

#2011

Zhong‐ping Jiang

#87710

Overall Influence

#2012

Elisa E. Konofagou

#73073

Overall Influence

Elisa Konofagou is a Greek biomedical engineer in the field of medical ultrasound. She is the Robert and Margaret Hariri Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at Columbia University in New York. Konofagou is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and she received the NSF CAREER Award in 2007.

#2013

David Edwards

#65377

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

David A. Edwards is an American biomedical engineer, and the founder of Sensory Cloud. He was the Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering at Harvard University. Edwards designs inhalable medicines, vaccines and victuals.

#2014

Juan Bernal Ponce

#48931

Overall Influence

1938 - 2006 (68 years)

Juan Bernal Ponce was a Chilean born Costa Rican architect. Bernal was born in Valparaíso. He went on to study at the School of Fine Arts in Viña del Mar in 1954. In 1957 he joined the School of Architecture, of the University of Chile, and in 1960 studied Architecture, at the University of Chile in Santiago, graduating in 1965.

#2015

Fei Richard Yu

#87738

Overall Influence

#2016

Richard Penty

#73186

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Richard Vincent Penty, FREng is a British engineer and academic. He is the current Master of Sidney Sussex College and Professor of Photonics at the University of Cambridge. Early life Penty was born on 9 September 1964 in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. He is the oldest of three sons of two Uttoxeter medical practitioners, Peter and Patricia Janet Penty. He was educated at Repton School, an independent school in Repton, Derbyshire. He studied engineering and electrical science at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1986.

#2017

Trevor Mudge

#55498

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Trevor Mudge is a computer scientist, academic and researcher. He is the Bredt Family Chair of Computer Science and Engineering, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan.

#2018

Frank Duffy

#43322

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Francis Cuthbert Duffy is a British architect, a founder of DEGW, the international architectural and design practice best known for office design and workplace strategy and, more recently for advanced thinking on the programming of educational and arts facilities. Duffy is particularly noted for his work on the future of the office and the flexible use of space.

#2019

Sigurd Skogestad

#87897

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

#2020

Marco Amabili

#75847

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Marco Amabili is a professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Vibrations and Fluid-Structure Interaction, Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada.

#2021

Nicholas Roy

#44051

Overall Influence

Nicholas Roy is a Canadian-American computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a principal investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research focuses on robotics, machine learning, autonomous systems, planning and reasoning, human-computer interaction and micro air vehicles and also principles of autonomy and decision-making. He received his PhD under Sebastian Thrun and Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University in 2003.

#2022

David Southwood

David Southwood

#28593

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

David John Southwood is a British space scientist who holds the post of Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College London. He was the President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 2012–2014, and earlier served as the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency . Southwood's research interests have been in solar–terrestrial physics and planetary science, particularly magnetospheres. He built the magnetic field instrument for the Cassini Saturn orbiter.

#2023

Richard Schechner

#4986

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Richard Schechner is University Professor Emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and editor of TDR: The Drama Review. Biography Richard Schechner received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1956, a Master's degree from the University of Iowa two years later, and a PhD from Tulane University in 1962. He edited The Drama Review, formerly the Tulane Drama Review, from 1962 to 1969; and again from 1986 to the present.

#2024

Mahta Moghaddam

#75890

Overall Influence

Mahta Moghaddam is an Iranian-American electrical and computer engineer and William M. Hogue Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering. Moghaddam is also the president of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society and is known for developing sensor systems and algorithms for high-resolution characterization of the environment to quantify the effects of climate change. She also has developed innovative tools using microwave technology to visualize biological struct...

#2025

Jesse Lowen Shearer

#76703

Overall Influence

1921 - 1992 (71 years)

Jesse Lowen Shearer was an American professor, engineer and pioneer in the field of hydraulics. Shearer obtained his Sc.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and as a member of their faculty for mechanical engineering he worked at Dynamic Analysis & Control Laboratory from 1950 to 1963. After then he became professor of the faculty of mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University until his retirement 1985. He was also a member of the Dynamic Systems and Control Division of American Society of Mechanical Engineers .

#2026

Tracy Caldwell Dyson

Tracy Caldwell Dyson

#9731

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Tracy Caldwell Dyson is an American chemist and NASA astronaut. Caldwell Dyson was a mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-118 in August 2007 and part of the Expedition 23 and Expedition 24 crew on the International Space Station from April 2010 to September 2010. She has completed three spacewalks, logging more than 22 hours of extravehicular activity. She is scheduled to return to space on March 13th, 2024 for a third time on board Soyuz MS-25 for a 6 months mission onboard the ISS.

#2027

Alexia Massalin

#28606

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Alexia Massalin is an American computer scientist and programmer. She pioneered the concept of superoptimization, and designed the Synthesis kernel, a small kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency.

#2028

Malcolm Parry

#67805

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

C. Malcolm Parry is a Welsh architect, professor emeritus, and TV/radio broadcaster. Early life Parry was born in Blaenavon, left school at the age of 15 and trained as a Mining Surveyor. He intended to attend university to study Civil Engineering but was encouraged by the then Head of Architecture at Cardiff University to study architecture. Parry was later employed by the university to teach and carry out research.

#2029

Katharina Landfester

#74628

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Katharina Landfester is a German chemist who is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. Her research considers the physical properties of droplets, polymerisation in emulsion and the synthesis of nanoparticles.

#2030

Chih Tang Sah

#88113

Overall Influence

#2031

Diane McKnight

#43757

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Diane McKnight is a professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder and a fellow at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research . McKnight is a founding principal investigator of the National Science Foundation's Long-Term Ecological Research program in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

#2032

Owen Saunders

#58467

Overall Influence

1904 - 1993 (89 years)

Sir Owen Alfred Saunders, FREng, FRS was an English applied mathematician, engineering science academic, and university administrator. Early life Owen Saunders was born in Streatham, London, the only son of Alfred George Saunders, an engineer, and Margaret Ellen Saunders . Saunders was educated at Emanuel School in south London . He attained a general science degree from Birkbeck College, London and went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge.

#2033

Hassan Aref

#32977

Overall Influence

1950 - 2011 (61 years)

Hassan Aref , was the Reynolds Metals Professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, and the Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Denmark.

#2034

Katherine Lee Schwennsen

#58317

Overall Influence

Katherine Lee Schwennsen is an American architect. She is a fellow with the American Institute of Architects and was the group's president from 2005 to 2006. In 2010 she was chosen to chair Clemson University’s School of Architecture

#2035

Joseph Majdalani

Joseph Majdalani

#44519

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Joseph Majdalani is an Lebanese-American professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He began his career at Marquette University, before serving as both the Jack D. Whitfield Professor of High Speed Flows and Arnold Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee Space Institute. He then served as the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council Endowed Professor and Chair, and is currently the Hugh and Loeda Francis Chair of Excellence in Aerospace Engineering at Auburn University.

#2036

Tereza Khristoforovna Margulova

#67842

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Teresa Christoforovna Margulova was a Soviet scientist, professor, and the founder of the Department of Nuclear Power Stations of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. She was born on August 14, 1912, and grew up in Baku. After graduating from the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute, she continued her education in a PhD program at The Moscow Power Engineering Institute .

#2037

Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuściński

#2801

Overall Influence

1932 - 2007 (75 years)

Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country.

#2038

Jean Zu

#48554

Overall Influence

Jean Zu is a Chinese-Canadian engineer, currently the dean of the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering & Science at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2039

David Ewins

#85306

Overall Influence

David John Ewins FRS FREng was a British mechanical engineer. He was Director of the Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamics Engineering at University of Bristol from 2007 to 2015. Life and career Ewins studied mechanical engineering at Imperial College London, and studied for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He was Professor of Vibration Engineering at Imperial College London.

#2040

Janet T. Powell

#88333

Overall Influence

#2041

Robert Loewy

#80098

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (98 years)

Robert Gustav Loewy is an aerospace engineer who has been influential in the development of rotary-wing vertical take-off and landing aircraft. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the class of 1947 with a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering degree. He earned an M.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1948 to 1962, Dr. Loewy worked in industry for the Glenn L. Martin Company; Piasecki Helicopter Corporation; Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory; and Vertol Aircraft, which later became a division of the Boeing Company.

#2042

John Newman

#49928

Overall Influence

1936 - 2023 (87 years)

John Arthur Newman was an English architectural historian. He was the author of several of the Pevsner Architectural Guides and was the advisory editor to the series. Life and career John Arthur Newman was born on 14 December 1936, and lived most of his life in Kent. He was educated at Dulwich College and Oxford University where he read Greats . In 1959 he became a classics teacher at Tonbridge School. In 1963 he left his teaching post to study for a diploma in the history of European art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, which he passed with distinction. In 1966 he was appointed a full-tim...

#2043

Yeheskel Bar-Ness

#41174

Overall Influence

Yeheskel Bar-Ness is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at New Jersey Institute of Technology . Education Bar-Ness received a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and a doctorate from Brown University.

#2044

Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme

#39837

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Suhas Pandurang Sukhatme is an Indian scientist, teacher, author and a former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board of the Government of India, known for his expertise in heat transfer and energy technologies. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2001, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.

#2045

Harold Kerzner

#23180

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Harold Kerzner is an American engineer, management consultant, Emeritus Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin Wallace University, and Sr. Executive Director for Project Management at the International Institute for Learning, known for his work in the field of project management.

#2046

Aaron D. Ames

#75751

Overall Influence

Aaron D. Ames has been the Bren Professor of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and Control and Dynamical Systems at California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, since 2017. Formerly, he was an associate professor of mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, and an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.

#2047

P. S. Krishnaprasad

#47401

Overall Influence

P. S. Krishnaprasad is a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Institute for Systems Research of the University of Maryland. A 1977 Harvard PhD, he began his professorial career at Case Western Reserve University's Systems Engineering Department before joining the University of Maryland in 1980. He has also held visiting positions at various American and European universities. P. S. Krishnaprasad has been an IEEE fellow since 1990, and was the 2007 recipient of the Hendrik W. Bode Lecture Prize.

#2048

Camillo Ricordi

Camillo Ricordi

#54841

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Camillo Ricordi is a diabetes researcher based in Miami, FL. He currently serves as Director of the Diabetes Research Institute, a position he has held since 1996. He is the Chief Academic Officer of the Diabetes Research Institute of the University of Miami and is director of the DRI's Cell Transplant Center. He has been active in stem cell research and its applications to treating diabetes, particularly Type 1 Diabetes. He specializes in pancreatic islet transplantation.

#2049

Vojteh Ravnikar

#36220

Overall Influence

1943 - 2010 (67 years)

Vojteh Ravnikar was a Slovenian architect. Early life Ravnikar was born in Ljubljana, in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but spent most of his childhood years in the town of Nova Gorica in western Slovenia. After graduating from the Nova Gorica Grammar School, he attended the University of Ljubljana, graduating with a degree in architecture.

#2050

Vikram Deshpande

#79230

Overall Influence

Vikram Sudhir Deshpande, , is an Indian-born British engineer and materials scientist, currently Professor of Materials Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Early life and education Deshpande grew up in Dadar, Mumbai, studied at Bombay Scottish School in Mahim, and gained a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1994. That year, he moved to Cambridge, UK to take an M.Phil. in engineering, initially working on transportation with David Cebon, and earning his Ph.D. in 1998.

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