N.C. A&T Researchers Among Top 2% of Cited Scientists Globally

EAST GREENSBORO, N.C. (Jan. 5, 2021) – Seven North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University faculty members are among the top 2% cited science researchers in the world, according to a new Stanford University study.

Those researchers are:

• Yuh-Lang Lin, Ph.D., senior scientist/professor of Physics
• Manoj Jha, Ph.D., associate professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
• Yusuf Adewuyi, Ph.D., professor of Chemical, Biological and Bio Engineering
• Lijun Wang, Ph.D., professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Design
• Narayan Bhattarai, Ph.D., professor of Chemical, Biological and Bio Engineering
• Shengmin Sang, Ph.D., research professor, Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies
• Kunigal Shivakumar, Ph.D., professor, Mechanical Engineering

The faculty are members of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of Science and Technology. They focus individually on topics ranging from health, food and nutrition innovation, and environmental waste cleanup and repurposing, clean water.

Considering the headlines of 2020 – record amounts of land burning in wildfires, a historic hurricane season, an ongoing pandemic and social unrest – the value of the research topics these faculty pursue is clear, as are the many ways their research and concepts could be applied to groundbreaking solutions to current challenges and others well beyond.

Bhattarai’s research focuses on design and development of health-care-biomaterials that mimic the nano- to micro-scale order found in nature. His team works with grants from National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health NSF–partnerships that no doubt increase the awareness and value of his work.

“Our research group is teamed with talented researchers from basic science to engineering to address challenging issues in tissue engineering and disease models particularly cancer, and wound healing,” said Bhattarai.

Sang, a pioneer in the food and nutrition sciences field, is studying bioactive compounds in whole grains, ginger, tea, apple, soy, and rosemary for the prevention of colon cancer, asthma, diabetes, diabetic complications and obesity.

This year, Sang received a new three-year grant totaling nearly $500,000 from the novel food and innovative manufacturing technology program under the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative to develop germinated and false-germinated oats as functional foods to prevent inflammation associated chronic diseases. His previous work has yielded multiple patents, one of which is now commercially licensed.

For the past twenty years, Jha has solved current water quality problems and designed ways to manage watersheds by developing and applying various tools and methods.

“Although much of my research has been used in design guidelines and my research concepts have been used in industrial applications, I’m pushing for my work to be adapted to solve both environmental and clean water problems, as well as local manufacturing,” Shivakumar said.

In 2018 he was featured for his research into making useful materials out of harmful coal ash that was leeching into a local waterway.

In 2020, North Carolina’s interior Alexander, Caldwell, Catawba, Iredell and Wilkes counties were flooded from the remnants of Hurricane Eta, while in 2019 the coast community of Ocracoke was flooded from Hurricane Dorian.

“My work on mesoscale dynamics and modeling are well received and quoted due to their help in understanding the dynamics and improving forecasting of severe local storms, tropical and extratropical cyclones, especially when they encountered orography,” says Lin. Orography focuses on the physical properties of mountains a hill–features critical to understanding the wide climate range from the mountains to seas of North Carolina.

That these researchers are so frequently cited globally is a testament to the strength of the ongoing research at N.C. A&T and its future capabilities. From health to environment to weather, faculty research at the university covers society’s most pressing topics.