September 2015 NUI Galway is Top Irish University for World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds

Four outstanding researchers at NUI Galway have been ranked among the ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2015’

Four outstanding researchers at NUI Galway have been ranked among the ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2015'. Professor Colin O’Dowd, Professor Donal O’Regan, Professor Henry Curran and Emeritus Professor John Simmie have been ranked among the world’s top 3,000 scientific minds by the multinational media body Thomson Reuters.

Those named on the list have earned their distinction by publishing the highest number of articles that rank among those most frequently cited by fellow researchers. More individuals were listed from NUI Galway than from any other Irish university. Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list was launched last year and also ranked three NUI Galway researchers among the ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014’.

According to NUI Galway’s President, Dr Jim Browne: “The report describes those listed as being ‘on the cutting edge of their fields’ and ‘among the most influential scientific minds of our time’. This is certainly true of the NUI Galway individuals who excel and out-perform in their fields of chemistry, climate change and mathematics”.

• Professor Colin O’Dowd is Director of the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies, at the Ryan Institute, NUI Galway and a Professor in the School of Physics, NUI Galway. Through his pioneering work in the field of atmospheric physics, Colin has become internationally renowned as one of the leading scientists in the field of climate change.

• Professor Donal O’Regan is a Personal Professor of Mathematics at NUI Galway’s School of Mathematics, Statistics and Applied Mathematics and an internationally recognised expert in the field of Nonlinear Analysis, Differential Equations, and Fixed Point Theory. He has written over 1,000 peer-reviewed mathematical articles, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of mathematics in the world.

• Professor Henry Curran is Director of the Combustion Chemistry Centre at NUI Galway’s School of Chemistry and of the Energy Research Centre in the Ryan Institute. His research interest lies in the study of the chemistry of how fuels burn in combustors in order to increase efficiency and reduce emissions for a cleaner world.

• Emeritus Professor John Simmie established the Combustion Chemistry Centre in the School of Chemistry at NUI Galway in the 1970’s and was instrumental in setting up the Environment and Energy research activity in the Ryan Institute at NUI Galway. John and his former student, Professor Henry Curran, collaborate on Combustion Chemistry research.

Thomson Reuters analysts assessed papers indexed between 2003 and 2013 in 22 broad fields of study. They tracked authors who published numerous articles that ranked among the top one percent of the most cited in their respective fields in the given year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact. These documents represent research that the scientific community has judged to be the most significant and useful.

Visit the Highly Cited Researchers list here http://highlycited.com/

For further information contact Gwen O’Sullivan, Press & Information Executive, NUI Galway on 091 495695 or gwen.osullivan@nuigalway.ie

-Ends-