CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —  In honor of World Environmental Health Day on September 26, RIPE Director Stephen P. Long was announced as Expertscape’s World Expert in Climate Processes, placing him in the top 0.1% of scholars writing about Climatic Processes over the past 10 years.

Expertscape is a service that uses a PubMed-based algorithm that objectively ranks persons and institutions according to their demonstrated expertise in more than 27,000 biomedical topics. 

“It is an honor to be given the title of World Expert via the Pub-Med-based algorithm. That though reflects the amazing group of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, faculty colleagues and in particular support staff who have all contributed to these publications. I humbly view this as a recognition of the wonderful team that I work with, and have worked with,” said Stephen Long, Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at Illinois’ Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. 

Steve is the Director of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project, an international research project led by Illinois that is engineering crops to be more productive by improving photosynthesis, the natural process all plants use to convert sunlight into energy and yields. RIPE is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, and U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

He is also the Ikenberry Endowed Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois and a Distinguished Professor of Crop Sciences at Lancaster University in the UK. Steve's research has increased our understanding of how global climate change is affecting plants and is helping to inform approaches to increase crop yields by improving the efficiency of photosynthesis. His expertise ranges from plant molecular biology to in silico crop design and field analyses of the impacts of atmospheric change on crops. 

Steve’s work is published in over 300 peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Science. He has also given briefings on food security and bioenergy to the U.S. president, the Vatican, and to Bill Gates. Thomson Reuters recognized Steve as a highly cited researcher in the field of plant and animal science every year since 2005. In 2013, Steve was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the oldest continually operating society that honors leading scientists and engineers. 

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Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) aims to improve photosynthesis and equip farmers worldwide with higher-yielding crops to ensure everyone has enough food to lead a healthy, productive life. RIPE is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, and the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

RIPE is led by the University of Illinois in partnership with The Australian National University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Lancaster University, Louisiana State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Cambridge, University of Essex, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service.

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By: Amanda Nguyen || RIPE Communications Specialist