For 3rd Straight Year, NJIT Professor Makes Global List of Highly Cited Researchers
A research paper on metal carbides and nitrides is paying dividends for NJIT’s Meng-Qiang Zhao — seven years after it was published.
For the third straight year, Zhao, an assistant professor of chemical and materials engineering at NJIT’s Newark College of Engineering, has made Clarivate’s list of Highly Cited Researchers. Why? Chiefly because peers continue to cite the paper, which introduced a faster and safer way to synthesize MXenes, a family of novel 2D transition metal carbides and nitrides, according to Zhao.
MXenes are promising electrode materials for next generation energy storage devices, such as batteries and supercapacitors. In particular, MXenes provide great promise to improve the power density of batteries and the energy density of supercapacitors. This will contribute toward building electric vehicles with longer driving mileages and smartphones with longer usage, while charging much faster.
Zhao is among five authors of the 2014 paper, which Nature published. At the time, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Drexel University. Zhao, who holds both a bachelor’s and Ph.D. in chemical engineering, joined NJIT last year.
When asked how the recognition helps him, Zhao said it “inspires me to continue with attractive research topics and helps to initiate many valuable collaborations.”
Clarivate saluted more than 6,600 researchers worldwide in its 2021 list, including 2,622 in the United States — the most of any region. The second biggest region was mainland China, with 935 honorees, and the third was the United Kingdom, with 492, according to Clarivate.
The list draws on data and analysis conducted by bibliometric experts and data scientists at Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information. The papers they considered were published between January 2010 and December 2020.
