Food Scientists Rank High in Updated Global Database

Six of the 12 UMass Amherst food science faculty members are ranked within the top 1.3% of their field in a publicly available, standardized global database, recently updated through 2020, which ranks scientists according to their citations and h-index. Hosted by Elsevier BV and developed by scientists at Elsevier, Scitech Strategies and Stanford using Digital Commons Data, the index measures the impact of a researcher’s scholarship production and performance.                                                        

The list includes the top 100,000 researchers in the world, representing the top 2% of all researchers. The six UMass food scientists included are: David Julian McClements, Eric Decker, Hang Xiao, Yeonhwa Park, Lili He and David Sela.

McClements, a pioneer in the use of structural design principles to improve the health, sustainability, safety and quality of foods, is the number one-ranked scientist in the food science category, out of 58,351 food scientists in the database.

In the career list, which covers citations throughout history, the food science department also performed impressively. Making that list were four current faculty (McClements, Decker, Park and Xiao) and six former faculty (Micha Peleg, Fergus Clydesdale, Jochen Weiss, Robert Levin, Jack Francis and the late Herbert Hultin, who died in 2007).

UMass also has three faculty members in the career list top 20 – McClements (number 1), Decker (number 9) and Peleg (number 16).

With the oldest academic program in the country, the food science department consistently ranks among the top food science programs in the nation and across the world and attracts global attention.