A trio of researchers for the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) Project have been named to the 2023 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes research scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence – reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade. RIPE’s Steve Long, Lisa Ainsworth, and Tracy Lawson were all selected to this year’s list, ranking in the top 1% of cited scientists in their fields in the last decade.

RIPE Director Steve Long is the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at the University of Illinois. He uses computational and bioengineering approaches to improve photosynthetic efficiency and works to address the effects of climate change on crop yields. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2013, a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019, and a Pioneer Member of the American Society of Plant Biologists in 2023. He is an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the Center for Advanced Study at Illinois as well as retaining a Visiting Professorship at the University of Oxford, U.K. 

Lisa Ainsworth is a RIPE Deputy Director and a crop sciences and plant biology professor at Illinois. Ainsworth is employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Unit. She is an affiliate of IGB, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, and the Center for Digital Agriculture. She also directs the Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment facility. A key goal of her research is to maximize crop production in the future. Ainsworth was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food and Agricultural Sciences in 2019 and was elected a National Academy of Sciences member in 2020.

Tracy Lawson is a professor of plant biology University of Essex where she is also the Director of Impact, Director of the Essex Plant Innovation Centre and the Plant Phenomics lab. This fall she was awarded the prestigious Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship. She is an expert in infrared gas exchange analysis, chlorophyll fluorescence, and plant imaging techniques and her research focuses on photosynthesis, stomatal behavior, and water-use efficiency at the leaf and whole plant level. Her team’s ultimate goal is to understand the impact that the changing environment has on these processes, and how to modify plants to grow more efficiently to feed the world. She leads RIPE’s Improving Leaf Conductance research objective.

This year, 7,125 researchers were recognized, or one in 1,000 scientists. Read the full list of scientists here.