U-M ranked fifth in a new study that examined how often research institutions’ academic papers in the field of engineering were cited during the past decade.
The analysis was conducted by Science Watch, a Thomson Reuters-sponsored effort to track trends in scientific research.
“The number of citations is a direct measurement of the influence that an original piece of work has on subsequent advances,” says Stephen Forrest, vice president for research and the William Gould Dow Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering. “Ranking high in the number of citations therefore is a very clear indication of the importance and quality of research done at U-M.”
Between 1999-2009, U-M researchers published 4,534 academic papers in engineering disciplines, and these were cited 30,545 times. U-M researchers authored highly cited papers about topics including tissue engineering, robotics, wireless sensor networks, implantable microsystems, fluid interfaces and microelectromechanical systems.
While College of Engineering researchers authored most of the top-cited papers in the discipline at U-M, contributions also came from faculty and students from other units including physics, math, statistics and chemistry.
The institutions highlighted in the Science Watch study are the very top among the 1,084 that make up the uppermost 1 percent of institutions when ranked by total citation count in the engineering field, the study says.
“I was pleased, but not surprised, to see the high ranking of Michigan Engineering in this study,” says David Munson, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering. “This is a credit to our top-notch faculty and students who are engaged in cutting-edge research that draws worldwide attention.”
