Professor Christodoulos A. Floudas, director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute and the Erle Nye ’59 Chair Professor for Engineering Excellence in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, as well as Professor Hongcai (Joe) Zhou, Davidson Professor in Science in the Department of Chemistry at at Texas A&M University, have been selected as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher for 2015.
Highly Cited Researchers 2015 represents some of world’s most influential scientific minds. Approximately three thousand researchers earned this distinction by writing the greatest number of reports officially designated by Essential Science Indicators as Highly Cited Papers — ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact. Seven faculty members at Texas A&M University were selected for this honor.
Professor Floudas is a world-renowned authority in mathematical modeling and optimization of complex systems. His research interests lie at the interface of chemical engineering, applied mathematics, and operations research, with principal areas of focus including multi-scale systems engineering for energy and the environment, chemical process synthesis and design, process operations, discrete-continuous nonlinear optimization, local and global optimization, and computational chemistry and molecular biology.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors for teaching and research, including election to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011, selection as a member of TAMEST (The Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Sciences of Texas) in 2015, and induction as a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens in 2015. Among other recognitions, Floudas was the recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1988, the 2001 AIChE Professional Progress Award for Outstanding Progress in Chemical Engineering, the 2006 AIChE Computing in Chemical Engineering Award, and he was named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in 2014 for the 11 years between 2002-2012.
Professor Zhou graduated from Texas A&M University with a Ph.D. in 2000. During his doctoral studies, he was the George W. Kunze Prize winner; his Ph.D. advisor was Professor F. A. Cotton. He then spent two years at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor R. H. Holm before joining the faculty of Miami University in 2002. Professor Zhou’s awards include a Research Innovation Award from Research Corporation in 2003, an NSF CAREER Award in 2005, a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation in 2005, the 2006 Miami University Distinguished Scholar – Young Investigator Award, and the 2007 Faculty Excellence Award from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. He and his research group moved to Texas A&M University in the summer of 2008. He is currently an Associate Editor for the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry. He was appointed a full professor in 2008, a Davidson Professor in Science in 2014, and a Robert A. Welch Chair in Chemistry in 2015.