Thirteen Wesleyan faculty are rated among the top 1% most-cited researchers worldwide, according to a recent study by PLOS Biology.
The study, led by Professor John Ioannidis from Stanford University, combines several different metrics to systematically rank the most influential scientists as measured by citations. More than six million scientists, who were actively working between 1996 and 2018, were analyzed for the project.
The faculty include: David Beveridge, Joshua Boger University Professor of the Sciences and Mathematics, emeritus Fred Cohan, Huffington Foundation Professor in the College of the Environment, professor of biology Mark Hovey, professor of mathematics, associate provost for budget and personnel Tsampikos Kottos, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of physics Matthew Kurtz, professor of psychology
Herbert Pickett, research professor in chemistry, emeritus Dana Royer, professor of earth and environmental sciences Francis Starr, professor of physics Steve Stemler, professor of psychology Ruth Striegel Weissman, Walter Crowell University Professor of Social Sciences, emerita Sonia Sultan, professor of biology Johan Varekamp, Harold T. Stearns Professor of Earth Science, emeritus Gary Yohe, Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, emeritus
In addition, at least eight Wesleyan alumni are rated in the top 0.1% of all scientists in the world including Gene Stanley ’62, Philip Russell ’65, Jay Levy ’60, Nick Turro ’60, Dr. William H. Dietz ’66, Michael Greenberg ’76, Jerry Melillo ’65, John Coffin ’67, and Hugh Wilson ’65. (Know of any others? Let us know at newsletter@wesleyan.edu!)
The study reinforces Wesleyan’s reputation as an exceptional liberal arts institution, said Wilson, who is professor emeritus of spatial and computational vision at York University.
“It is sometimes questioned whether a liberal arts education is really optimal for an aspiring scientist. After all, wouldn’t it be better to take just science and math courses rather than spending part of one’s time with literature, philosophy, history, or art,” he said. “So, [this study shows that] liberal arts continue to attract outstanding scientists as dedicated faculty members who espouse both teaching and research.”
Janice Naegele, Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science, dean of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics Division, and professor of biology, is the co-author of three recent publications. Naegele’s work focuses on stem cells and finding new treatments for epilepsy and brain damage.
Erika Taylor, associate professor of chemistry, recently co-authored three papers and a book chapter related to (1) biomass to biofuel production and (2) development of new therapeutics to treat Gram-negative bacterial infections.
Taylor’s work investigates problems at the biological chemistry interface and seeks to find applications of her work to the fields of medicine and sustainable energy.
The remaining papers describe efforts to understand the machine-like motions of the protein Heptosytransferase I and efforts to design inhibitors against them to treat bacterial infections:
This summer, Taylor is overseeing the McNair research program with Ronnie Hendrix, and in the fall, she will be teaching a new First Year Seminar titled Chemistry in Your Life.
Tsampikos Kottos, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of physics; Rodion Kononchuk, postdoctoral physics research associate; and Joseph Knee, Beach Professor of Chemistry, are developing a hypersensitive sensor at Wesleyan.
When launching spacecrafts and missiles, small navigational mistakes could lead to catastrophic results. A satellite could spin completely out of orbit, a missile could mistakenly strike a civilian territory, or a spaceship could end up at another planet altogether.
Three Wesleyan researchers are collaborating on the development of a novel sensor that would benefit navigation and several other applications.
The new, hypersensitive acceleration sensor is based on a principle borrowed from nuclear physics and has been developed at Wesleyan. It provides enhanced sensitivity and precision compared to conventional sensors.
“Our underlying concept can be applied in a variety of sensing applications ranging from avionics and earthquake monitoring to bio-sensing,” said study co-author Rodion Kononchuk, postdoctoral physics research associate in Wesleyan’s Wave Transport in Complex Systems Laboratory. “We believe that our results will attract a broad interest from research and engineering communities across a wide range of disciplines, which could result in a realization of next-generation sensors.”
In a June 2021 Science Advances article titled “Enhanced Avionic Sensing Based on Wigner’s Cusp Anomalies,” Kononchuk, along with Tsampikos Kottos, Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science and Society, professor of physics; Joseph Knee, Beach Professor of Chemistry; and Joshua Feinberg, professor of physics at the University of Haifa in Israel, shared their study’s results.
The Wesleyan team has demonstrated a whopping 60-fold improved performance in acceleration measurements compared to conventional accelerometers (i.e. sensing devices that measure variations in the acceleration). Wesleyan has already supported a provisional patent application for this study.
Kottos, who spearheads the Physics Department’s Wave Transport in Complex Systems Laboratory, says a “good sensor” is characterized by two elements: its high sensitivity to small “perturbations” and its dynamical range. The latter is the ratio of the maximum to the minimum perturbation that a sensor can detect. And the larger the dynamic range, the better it is.
“Think of a spacecraft or missile. When it takes off, it develops high accelerations, but in the voyage, it needs to detect small accelerations in order to correct its trajectory,” Kottos said. “We believe that our sensor has the ability to measure such a large range of accelerations. Moreover, it is simple to implement and does not suffer from excessive noise that can degrade the quality of the measurements—as opposed to some recent proposals of hypersensitive sensing.”
Although the project is heavily physics-based, Kottos and Kononchuk knew they needed a chemist to help turn their theories into a reality. As it turned out, Knee—who is an expert on optical sensing—had laboratory experience that was applicable to the current project.
“It was wonderful to be brought into such an exciting project,” Knee said. “My research area is in laser spectroscopy which requires significant expertise and experimental capabilities in optical physics. Fortunately, my lab had some key capabilities which helped us put together an experimental prototype that ultimately was used to validate the theoretical constructs.”
“Joe’s experimental expertise in the chemistry framework was crucial for building the experimental platform,” Kottos said. “Our initial discussions helped us to better understand what can or cannot be done and allowed us to successfully design the experiment with a limited budget.”
Kottos began research for the new hypersensitive avionic sensor design in 2018 after receiving a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. The guiding principles were to maximize the sensitivity of the sensor without compromising its dynamical range [i.e. the ratio between the largest and smallest perturbation that a sensor can measure] while making it as cheap and simple to make, as possible.
The current sensor design is approximately 4 inches long, but the size could be reduced depending on the application. Smartphone sensors, for example, measure about 1/4 of an inch, but they are far less sensitive than the design created at Wesleyan. Wesleyan undergraduate Jimmy Clifford ’23 is currently working on simulations to come up with a miniaturized design of this concept.
“Once we have it, either we will have to partner with a fabricator or we will have to off-shore the design and test it at Wesleyan,” Kottos said. “We hope to take this concept to production and hopefully to the marketplace!”
Thirteen students, majoring in chemistry, physics, astronomy, molecular biology and biochemistry, biology, neuroscience and behavior, psychology, and quantitative analysis submitted images for the 2021 Scientific Imaging Contest.
At first glance, a viewer sees a single image of pink-tinted cubes, resembling a bacteria culture from high school biology.
But upon closer examination, the viewer begins to see a series of other shapes—triangles to hexahedrons to tetahexahedraons (cubes with four-sided pyramids on each face).
“If you stare at this image for a while, you can see that it’s actually a series of five images in the top row, and five images on the bottom row, and each of these images show us nanoparticles that are made of gold and copper,” said Brian Northrop, professor of chemistry. “It’s intriguing, captivating, and visually very interesting.”
The image, which depicts bimetallic gold-copper (Au-Cu) nanoparticles synthesized with varying concentrations and amounts of sodium iodide, was created by Jessica Luu ’24 using a scanning electron microscope. It also was the first place winner in Wesleyan’s 2021 Scientific Imaging Contest.
Jessica Luu ’24 took first place with a series of 10 images of bimetallic gold-copper (Au-Cu) nanoparticles synthesized with varying concentrations and amounts of sodium iodide. They were imaged using a scanning electron microscope (SEM).
The annual contest, spearheaded by Wesleyan’s College of Integrative Sciences, encourages students to submit images and descriptions of the research that they’ve been conducting over the summer.
The judges this year included Northrop; Amy MacQueen, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry; and Renee Sher, assistant professor of physics. The top three submissions win cash prizes.
“What makes the winners stand out are (1) the images are intriguing and we want to find out more, (2) the paragraph they provide allow a broad audience to learn about the science behind their work, and (3) after reading the text we feel their description elevates the art even more,” Sher said.
Luu explained that as she increased the amount of sodium oxide with both copper and gold, the metals’ nanoparticles changed in terms of shape, sharpness, and even color. Since these results are called “gradients,” Luu decided to use an actual gradient of colors using Photoshop to represent the changing conditions.
“We found it really visually intriguing and you could really see all of the science that goes into creating these nanoparticles,” Northrop said.
Luu, a chemistry and “tentatively” environmental studies major, created the nanoparticle images this summer while working in the lab of Michelle Personick, associate professor of chemistry. Luu is expanding on gold-copper nanoparticle research first synthesized by one of the group’s alumni, David Solti ’18.
“I decided to enter the contest because this was a great opportunity to combine art with science,” Luu said. “If I wasn’t a science major, then I would most likely be studying art. I hadn’t previously done any artwork that was based on research, so I thought this could be an interesting way to test the waters and see what I could create. Since nanoparticles are geometric, I have also been using modular origami to understand their structures—though with limited success currently … Perhaps I will have enough of an understanding to create models to represent the particles I’ve been working with in the future!”
Morgan Long ’22 took second place with his diagram of orbiting stars colliding with another incoming star.
Morgan Long ’22 took second place with his diagram interpreting an integration of more than 30 million different initial conditions for a bound pair of orbiting stars colliding with another incoming star.
The yellow pixel represents an unknown outcome, while the others correspond to a different one of the three stars escaping. The points where white, black, and red all touch are locations where three stars all get close to each other, and all three might even collide head-on.
“One of the things that really jumped out at us is that the yellow pixels represent an unknown outcome— a renewal—a wait for the unknown, really unknown,” Sher said. “It’s so totally artsy, and fascinating.”
Wiralpach Nawabutsitthirat ’22 took third place with this image representing how different variables affect our ability to read words. Thirty words are displayed in columns, in the order in which people tend to learn words in life or age-of acquisition. The word learned at the youngest age (i.e., happy in this study) is located at the top left, while the word learned at the oldest age (i.e., salient in this study) is at the bottom right. The word’s imageability rating determines font size, and the higher the number of colors behind each word, the higher its sensory experience rating. Letter spacing is equated to the word’s total gaze duration to showcase how people take longer to process a word when it is longer, complex, or vague.
Wiralpach Nawabutsitthirat ’22 took third place with this image representing how different variables affect our ability to read words. Thirty words are displayed in columns, in the order in which people tend to learn words in life. The word learned at the youngest age (i.e., happy in this study) is located at the top left, while the word learned at the oldest age (i.e., salient in this study) is at the bottom right.
“Words with more definite meanings are processed quicker, just as words with more contrast from the background are easier to read. Taken together, words with more striking visuals are words that are easier to read and understand,” Nawabutsitthirat explained.
MacQueen admired Nawabutsitthirat’s submission for not only being aesthetically appealing but for representing how eye-catching units of human language can be.
“Wiralpach’s image— it jumped out to all of us,” she said. “There’s shapes and colors and sizes of things to look at, but maybe because of our intimate connection with the written word as humans, this work also engaged our curiosity, so we were spurred to ask, ‘Why do you know these words? What do the different sizes mean? What does the spacing between the letters mean?”
The judges also credited Nawabutsitthirat’s accompanying legend that helped inform and transform the way they thought about the piece.
“Certain words can elicit a greater sensory experience than others, and so the entry was notable for initially capturing our curiosity, making us question things,” MacQueen said. “After reading the descriptions, we were feeling more informed and had a deeper connection with the art.
Northrup applauds all thirteen students who submitted images this year.
“Our goal is to promote and represent science for not only the scientifically literate but for a general audience,” Northrop said. “This year we had many captivating images that drew us in.”
“Conditions during a parent’s lifetime can induce phenotypic changes in offspring, providing a potentially important source of variation in natural populations. Yet to date, biotic factors have seldom been tested as sources of transgenerational effects in plants,” reads an excerpt from the paper’s abstract.
