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UC Santa Cruz among top 10 public U.S. universities with high-impact research, analysis shows
The campus ranks among the top 10 public universities in the United States home to high-impact researchers, according to a recent analysis by Clarivate.
Research areas with the highest number of citations include astronomy and astrophysics, biomolecular engineering and genomics, and chemistry and biochemistry.
UC Santa Cruz researchers are consistently at the forefront of research and driving groundbreaking innovations.
The campus ranks among the top 10 public universities in the United States home to high-impact researchers, according to a recent analysis by Clarivate. UC Santa Cruz is also one of five UC campuses on the list.
The latest study, Research powerhouses: The top 70 institutions home to Highly Cited Researchers (2021-2025), builds on the organization’s longstanding practice of identifying researchers who have published highly cited peer-reviewed studies.
More than 22 UC Santa Cruz researchers—six faculty and 16 staff—are on Clarivate’s 2025 Highly Cited Researchers list. Research areas with the highest number of citations include astronomy and astrophysics, biomolecular engineering and genomics, and chemistry and biochemistry.
These highly-cited researchers are leading the way in discovery by delivering profound advances that range from exploring the cosmos in astronomy and astrophysics to mapping the human blueprint in genomics and biomolecular engineering, pioneering new materials, advancing our molecular understanding of human disease, and developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools.
Highly cited faculty on the 2025 list include: Jonathan Fortney, professor of astronomy and astrophysics; Garth Illingworth, distinguished professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics; David Haussler, distinguished professor of biomolecular engineering and director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute; Karen Miga, associate professor of biomolecular engineering; Benedict Paten, professor of biomolecular engineering; and Yat Li, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
Highly cited staff researchers on the list include: Mark Diekhans, technical director of the Genomics Institute’s Computational Genomics Laboratory; and James Kent, creator and former director of the UC Santa Cruz Genome Browser; along with Genomics Institute research and bioinformatics staff members Galt Barber, Jonathan Casper, Hiram Clawson, Jairo Navarro Gonzalez, Maximilian Haeussler, Angie Hinrichs, Robert Kuhn, Brian Lee, Christopher Lee, Brian Raney, Kate Rosenbloom, Matthew Speir, and Ann Zweig. Daniel Magee, a staff programmer with the UC Observatories, also made the list.