Three scientists from the Bordeaux campus among the most cited researchers in the world

The impact of the highly cited researchers list is significant, as it forms the basis of several international rankings, including the Shanghai ranking which awards 20% of a university’s global score according to this criterion. Hence the importance for researchers - and institutions in general – to follow precise and consistent guidelines when publishing their work.

In 2022, 6,938 researchers from 69 different countries were selected based on the number of highly cited papers they produced over an 11-year period from January 2011 to December 2021, thus highlighting the work of those who have published papers relating to one of the 21 fields of research, or several fields if the work was multidisciplinary.

Three researchers from Bordeaux are among the top 1% of researchers that were the most cited by their peers:

Didier Astruc, cited in the Chemistry category

Didier Astruc is an Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Molecular Sciences (ISM - CNRS, Bordeaux INP and the University of Bordeaux) and a nanoscience chemist. His research focuses on nanosystems at the interface between metallic nanoparticles and arborescent macromolecules, in order to design new sensors, drug vectors and catalysts, in the spirit of green chemistry. He has published around ten coursebooks and research books in organometallic chemistry, catalysis and molecular electronics, and has published many scientific papers. He is currently developing new recyclable nanocatalysts in the field of energy, in partnership with several Chinese scientific teams and with the help of a group of students. In December 2019, he was elected Member of the Academy of Science in the chemistry section.

Erwan Bézard, cited in the Cross-field category

Erwan Bézard is an INSERM Research Director, founder of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IMN - CNRS and University of Bordeaux - Bordeaux Neurocampus) and a neurobiologist. With his team, he has developed translational research for more than 20 years to improve medical care of Parkinson's disease and related syndromes. He is known for his work on the compensatory mechanisms that mask the progression Parkinson's disease, the pathophysiology of levodopa-induced dyskinesia, the intimate mechanisms of cell death in Parkinson’s disease, the modelling of disease progression and the development of new strategies to alleviate symptoms and/or to slow disease progression. His recent works around synucleinopathies help guiding current therapeutic developments. He received international and national prizes to acknowledge his contributions and was recently awarded an ERC Synergy Grant in 2020.

Sylvain Delzon, cited in the Plant and Animal Science category

Sylvain Delzon is an INRAE Research Director in the Biodiversity, Genes and Communities laboratory (Biogeco - INRAE and University of Bordeaux). He challenges the laws of cavitation to study forest response to climate change. His research is carried out in the field through in situ monitoring, where he evaluates the impact of climate change on tree phenology and physiology to better understand their response and distribution (forests of Troncais and the Pyrenees), as well as in laboratories, thanks to the development of prototypes, such as the Cavitron, which enable him to measure the drought resistance of forest species across the world. He is currently working on forest tree decline, especially in the redwood forests of California - in partnership with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley - where the tallest trees in the world are currently on the brink of extinction. He recently set up an experimental forest in Floirac, on the university campus, which notably made it possible to quantify on the one hand the impact of the historic drought of the summer of 2022 on the trees, and on the other hand the return effect of the forest on the city (cooling effect). This experimental forest also aims to propose agroecological transitions in arable crops with forest-based solutions in order to increase carbon storage in the soil and reduce the use of inputs.