Three University of Vermont faculty have been named to a list of the world’s most influential researchers, based on the number of times their published studies have been cited by other researchers over the past decade. Researchers on the list are in the top 1 percent of all scholars whose work has been cited. The prestigious Highly Cited Researchers list is compiled and published annually by Clarivate Analytics.
UVM faculty named to the list are William Copeland, professor of psychiatry, and Mary Cushman, professor of medicine and of pathology and laboratory medicine, both in UVM’s Larner College of Medicine. Taylor Ricketts, director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment, was also named to the list.
“The Highly Cited Researchers list is the gold standard for work that is making a real difference,” said Patty Prelock, University of Vermont provost. “We couldn’t be more proud that the research accomplishments of Drs. Copeland, Cushman and Ricketts have earned them inclusion in this select group.”
William Copeland, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry in the Larner College of Medicine and director of research, Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families.
Trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont, Copeland specializes in childhood mental illness and early adversity. With support from the National Institute for Mental Health, the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the National Institute for Child Health and Development and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, his studies have resulted in more than 100 scientific publications, including Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Nature Neuroscience, American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Lancet: Psychiatry, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His work has been covered in such national news outlets as Slate, the New York Times, TIME magazine and CNN.
Currently, Copeland is principal investigator of the community-representative Great Smoky Mountains Study, which has been following 1420 participants in rural Appalachia for over 25 years to understand the long-term consequences of early adverse experiences.
His research focuses on how childhood mental illness and other adversities compromise health and functioning across the lifespan, including how early experiences impact different biological systems. Copeland also teaches undergraduate students in the “Healthy Brains, Healthy Bodies” course as part of the Behavioral Change Health Studies Minor.
Copeland was named in the Psychiatry and Psychology category. He was previously named to the Highly Cited Researchers list 2017.
Mary Cushman, professor of medicine and of pathology and laboratory medicine, Larner College of Medicine, University Scholar.
Cushman is an international expert on the epidemiology of coagulation, inflammation and other vascular-related domains in relation to etiology and pathogenesis of stroke, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular diseases and other diseases of aging. She conducts research and publishes as a key investigator on a number of longitudinal health studies and has been a recipient of continuous National Institutes of Health funding for more than 20 years.
Also the medical director of the thrombosis and hemostasis program at the UVM Medical Center, Cusham is editor-in-chief of the newest journal of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis, Research and Practice in Thrombosis and Haemostasis. She was recently awarded the American Heart Association’s Population Research Prize.
Cushman leads a large research laboratory and mentors UVM graduate students in the clinical and translational science and public health programs, postdoctoral students, as well as medical students and residents and fellows in UVM Medical Center training programs. She is also a University Scholar at UVM.
Cushman’s category was Cross-Field, which identifies researchers with substantial influence across several fields. Cushman was also named to the Highly Cited Researchers list last year.
Taylor Ricketts, director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Gund Professor at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.
Ricketts studies environmental issues Vermont and worldwide. His over 130 scientific publications range from investigations of climate impacts on global crop pollination to analyses of the economic and health benefits provided to humans by forests, urban parks, wetlands, reefs, and other natural areas.
Ricketts is a pioneering scholar in the field of ecosystem services, which quantifies the benefits that nature provides to people. He co-founded the Natural Capital Project, a partnership among universities and NGOs to map and value the benefits of nature. He also authored and edited two UN-sponsored efforts to assess global ecosystems and their contributions to human wellbeing.
As a teacher and scholar, Ricketts explores a critical question: How can we meet the needs of people and nature in an increasingly crowded, changing world? Besides leading UVM’s Gund Insitute for Environment and the Taylor Ricketts Lab, he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes, including Landscape Ecology (NR 220), Ecosystem Services (NR 342), and Biodiversity: Patterns and Processes (EnSc 295).
Taylor was selected in the Environment and Ecology category. This is the fourth consecutive year Ricketts has been named to the list of Highly Cited Researchers.
The methodology that determines the high-impact researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute of Scientific Information at Clarivate Analytics. It uses Essential Science Indicators, a unique compilation of science performance metrics and trend data based on scholarly paper publication counts and citation data from the Web of Science, the premier web-based environment of scientific and scholarly research literature totaling over 33,000 journals.
View the Highly Cited Researchers 2019 list.
Source: UVM News