An Irish engineer has been ranked among the best researchers in the world by the multinational media body Thomson Reuters. Prof Henry Curran, director of the Combustion Chemistry Centre at NUI Galway, has been listed as one of the world’s top 3,000 scientific minds, which means the person’s research is listed in the top 1 per cent for the number of times their work has been cited by other scientists. Prof Curran’s research interest lies in the study of the chemistry of how fuels burn in combustors in order to increase efficiency and reduce emissions for a cleaner world. In total, some 11 researchers based in Irish universities have been ranked among the world’s top 3,000. The list includes researchers from NUI Galway, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, University of Limerick, University College Cork, Beaumont Hospital and the University of Ulster. All were gauged to be “highly cited researchers” who had had an “exceptional impact”, Thomson Reuters said. Their work “has consistently been judged by peers to be of particular significance and utility”, the company said when releasing the list on the website highlycited.com. Those selected will also be published in book form, the Thomson Reuters 2014 World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH Inclusion in this publication means the researcher is among those “who are on the cutting edge of their fields. They are performing and publishing work that their peers recognise as vital to the advancement of their science”. NUI Galway had three academics on the list: along with Prof Curran were Colin O’Dowd (geosciences) and Donal O’Regan (mathematics). Trinity College Dublin had two researchers: Luke O’Neill (immunology/pharmacology and toxicology) and Jonathan Coleman (materials science). University College Dublin also had two: Colm O’Donnell (agricultural sciences) and Desmond Higgins (computer science). University of Limerick had Michael Zaworotko (chemistry); University College Cork had John Cryan (pharmacology and toxicology); Beaumont Hospital had Mary Cannon (psychiatry and psychology); and University of Ulster had Brendan McCormack (social sciences). Thomson Reuters analysts assessed papers indexed between 2002 and 2012 in 21 broad fields of study. They tracked authors who published numerous articles that ranked among the top 1 per cent of the most cited in their respective fields in the given year of publication. These documents represent research that the scientific community has judged to be the most significant and useful.