Three researchers for the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project have been named to the 2024 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, Tracy Lawson, and Elizabete Carmo-Silva were all selected to this year’s list, meaning they rank 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, 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. 

Tracy Lawson is a professor of plant biology at the University of Essex where she is also the Director of Impact, of the Essex Plant Innovation Centre and the Plant Phenomics lab. 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 levels. 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. Lawson was awarded the prestigious Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2023. She leads RIPE’s Improving Leaf Conductance research objective.

Elizabete Carmo-Silva is a professor of crop physiology at Lancaster University. Carmo-Silva is an internationally recognized expert on photosynthetic biochemistry, focusing on the regulation of carbon assimilation in crop plants, especially wheat and cowpea. She has been an invited author, editor, and reviewer for a number of publications including journal articles and book chapters. Carmo-Silva is the Director of Postgraduate Research Programmes and Rubisco lead for the Lancaster Environment Centre, along with being a group leader for the Designing Future Wheat project. She leads RIPE’s work in the area of Improving Rubisco.

This year, 6886 researchers were recognized, or one in 1000 scientists. Read the full list of scientists here.