10 Salk University professors named world’s most highly cited researchers
LA JOLLA—Professors Joseph Ecker, Ronald Evans, Rusty Gage, Christian Metallo, Satchidananda Panda, Reuben Shaw, and Kay Tai of Salk, along with Assistant Professor Jesse Dixon of Clarivate Nominated to the list of highly cited researchers. This year’s list includes her 6,938 researchers from 69 countries, identifying researchers who have “made a significant impact in their chosen field through the publication of multiple highly-cited papers.” increase. Ecker and Gage have been on the list every year since his 2014 regular annual rankings began. Also on the list was Joseph Nelly, Research Assistant II at the Ecker Institute.
Additionally, Professors Joanne Chory and Emeritus Catherine Rivier were named among the World’s 1,000 Best Female Scientists, Research.com’s first ranking to honor the contributions of women in science. Rankings are based on factors such as the impact and importance of a researcher’s achievements, awards, and fellowships.
Evans and Gage were ranked among the top 100 best scientists in the world by Research.com, the first ranking to identify leading experts in a particular research field.
David Pendlebury, Director of Research and Analysis at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information, said: “These individuals are helping transform human ingenuity into the world’s greatest breakthroughs, and we are honored to be recognized for their achievements.”
Top row from left: Ronald Evans, Rusty Gage, Christian Metallo
Left to bottom center: Satchidananda Panda, Catherine Rivier, Ruben Shaw
Below: Kei Tai
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Credit: Salk Institute
Joanne Cholly
Chory is Professor and Director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory in Salk, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and holder of the Howard H. and Mariam R. Newman Chair in Plant Biology. Her awards for Chory include the L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Award, the Gruber Genetics Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Princess of Asturias Award and the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize. She is also the founding director of Salk’s Plant Utilization Initiative. This is a bold approach to addressing climate change by optimizing plants’ natural ability to capture and store carbon and adapt to diverse climatic conditions.
Jesse Dixon
Dixon is an assistant professor at the Gene Expression Laboratory. He studies how abnormal genome folding introduces errors into critical stretches of noncoding DNA (regions that do not code for proteins) that cause many diseases, including cancer. His team recently discovered genetic changes that alter the folding of the 3D genome and lead to the activation of oncogenes, genetic alterations that can turn normal cells into cancer. Their findings may lead to improved methods of cancer prediction and treatment.
Joseph Ecker
Ecker is a professor at the Institute of Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology in Salk, director of the Institute for Genome Analysis, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also chairman of the Salk International Council of Genetics. He was the first to show that the epigenome is highly dynamic in brain cells during the transition from birth to adulthood. Ecker is currently leading his $126 million effort to map the aging human brain as part of Brain Aging Research by the National Institutes of Health’s Innovative Neurotechnology (BRAIN) initiative. This project establishes a baseline against which scientists can compare the brain to neurological or psychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, depression and traumatic brain injury.
Ronald Evans
Evans is Professor and Director of the Gene Expression Institute and holds the March of Dimes Chair in Molecular Developmental Biology. He is an authority on both the normal activity of hormones and their role in disease. His discovery of the nuclear receptor superfamily uncovered over 40 previously unknown physiological pathways that have ushered in a new era of molecular endocrinology and drug discovery. About 20% of his current FDA-approved drugs, with a market value of $30 billion annually, target nuclear receptors. The receptor is a major target for the treatment of breast cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, leukemia, osteoporosis, and asthma.
rusty gauge
Gage, professor at the Institute of Genetics and holder of the Vi and John Adler Chair for the study of age-related neurodegenerative diseases, is president of the Salk Institute. He found that the adult brain continues to generate new neurons throughout his life in a process known as neurogenesis. Most recently, he and Salk’s team of researchers collaborated with the American Heart Association and the Brain to pursue novel collaborative approaches to understand, detect, and potentially treat Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline. Allen received a grant for his initiative on health.
Christian Metallo
Metallo is a professor at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology. He aims to understand how nutrition and metabolism contribute to diseases such as cancer, macular disease, and peripheral neuropathy. Discovered metabolic susceptibility of certain cancers. He also revealed how genetics and diabetes alter amino acid and fat metabolism, leading to visual impairment and peripheral nervous system dysfunction.
Satchidana Panda
Panda is Professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory and holder of the Rita and Richard Atkinson Chair. He seeks to uncover the link between our circadian clock and health. In his lab, he found that limiting calorie expenditure from his 8 hours to his 12 hours (called a timed diet) could stave off high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, and liver disease. I found Panda was one of the researchers who discovered that melanopsin, a blue-light-sensitive protein, has essential functions in regulating the circadian clock, sleep and wakefulness. Recently, his lab demonstrated that timed meals can improve the health and well-being of shift workers such as firefighters.
Catherine Rivier
Rivier helped explain how the brain responds to stressors and communicates with the rest of the body via hormones. Her team showed that rodents exposed to alcohol during embryonic development release excessive levels of stress-related brain hormones and, in adulthood, exhibit elevated adrenal responses to stressors. She also showed that alcohol exposure during adolescence produces lasting changes in areas of the brain associated with the development of substance abuse in adulthood. identified a new pathway that controls the activity of This finding provided insight into puzzling cases of low testosterone secretion associated with stressors and disease.
Reuben Shaw
A professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and holder of the William R. Brody Chair, Shaw is director of the Salk Cancer Center and a recipient of the National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award. He found that a gene that is frequently mutated in cancer regulates an enzyme that is critical to the therapeutic efficacy of metformin, his forefront type 2 diabetes drug that is currently the most widely used. Shaw continues to study how nutritional deficiencies and cellular energy levels control cancer and other diseases.
Kei Thai
Tye is a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a holder of the Wiley Bale Chair. She seeks to understand the neural mechanisms of psychological concepts such as anxiety, craving and loneliness. Recent work in her lab reveals how the mammalian brain encodes social status and uses this information to shape behavior. Tye also discovered neuropeptides that act as switches that assign positive or negative emotions to memories. This paves the way for a better understanding of the mechanisms that identify things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (functions essential to survival). She is crippled by a wide range of mental illnesses.
