Annamaria Petrozza, Liberato Manna and Michael Lombardo are the IIT’s researchers included in the Clarivate Plc’s 2021 list of Highly Cited Researchers, published last November 16th
The annual list – explains the company in a press release – “identifies some 6,600 researchers from across the globe who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade”. The examined period is 2011-2021 and the analysis identifies researchers from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™ citation index. The three IIT researchers have also in common to be grantees of the European Research Council (ERC), thus already representing scientific excellence in Europe.
Michael Lombardo is Principal Investigator of Neurodevelopmental Disorders research line at IIT’s Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems (CNCS) based in Rovereto. Dr Lombardo commented, “It is a great honor to be recognized in this list, and I think it is an example of the more general fact that IIT’s neuroscience research is world leading and has wide sweeping international impact”. Lombardo’s research has important impact on understanding multiscale heterogeneity present in autism spectrum conditions – work that is currently funded by his ERC Grant AUTISMS.
Petrozza and Manna are not new to being Highly Cited Researchers. Annamaria Petrozza, who leads the “Advanced Materials for Optoelectronics” Research Group at IIT’s Center in Milan, appeared in the Clarivate’s list in 2018, 2019 and 2020. She is an expert in solution processable semiconductors and in time-resolved optical spectroscopy. In 2014, she received the “Innovators Under 35 Italy” award by the MIT Technology Review for her pioneering work on perovskites and in 2017 and 2020 she was awarded with two ERC grants for further developing perovskite technology. She is also coordinator of the EU-funded project, PERSEPHONe (PERovskite SEmiconductors for PHOtoNics), a training programme for young researchers which recently started (link to the news https://opentalk.iit.it/en/persephone-a-training-program-to-skill-up-early-stage-researchers-to-develop-a-novel-technological/)
Liberato Manna, IIT’s Associate Director for the Materials and Nanotechnologies research domains and Principal Investigator of the Materials@nanoscale group, is a highly cited researcher since 2018. He is one of the pioneers in nanochemistry, working on nanomaterials that have applications in optoelectronics and energy. In 2019 he received the Sacconi Medal in Inorganic Chemistry and in 2010 he was ranked among the top 100 Chemists of the 2000-2010 decade by Thomson Reuters. Nowadays he is very active on Twitter, that he considers part of his role of scientist “to give advices and express personal thoughts to the scientific community, with a special target on young researchers and emphasis on science seen more as a collaborative effort than a one-person show.
