PROVO, Utah — BYU professor Michael Scott is an all-star researcher.
Just ask Google Scholar, which tracks how often a researcher's work is cited by other researchers.
Scott's scholarly articles are so influential in the field of computer science engineering that they have been cited by 3,028 other peer-reviewed research articles in the past five years.
That broad influence in his field recently led Thomson Reuters to name Scott, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, one of 54 American professors on its list of "Highly Cited Researchers" in computer science.
To make the list, a researcher must have multiple papers that rank in the top 1 percent of most cited articles for their field over the previous 10 years. Scott has five papers that have been cited more than 200 times and eight others that have been cited over 100 times.
This is the third time a BYU professor has made the prestigious list. Scott's computer science colleague, Thomas Sederberg, is the other standing BYU faculty member honored as a Highly Cited Researcher. Sederberg and Scott have combined on some papers.
Former BYU life sciences professor Keith Crandall earned the honor while at the school in 2010.
Scott heads up BYU's computational geometry and mechanics group. His research focuses on fundamental developments in computer-aided engineering design and development processes. His work is being applied to aerospace, naval, automotive, marine and biomedical fields.
"I’ve been blessed to have had excellent mentors along the way, and now I’m blessed to have great students and colleagues,” Scott said in a BYU release. "This honor means the research we are doing here is significant and people care about it."
Scott is also an example of how BYU professors include students in their research as part of the university's emphasis on mentored learning, said Michael Jensen, dean of the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology.
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