A recent paper in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation identified 400 of the world’s most influential researchers in biomedicine—and five hail from Duke University. The authors used citation data spanning 15 years (1996-2011) from Scopus, a database of peer-reviewed literature, to pinpoint researchers with high degrees of productivity and impact. Get to know the Duke researchers:
Robert M. Califf is a global leader in treating cardiovascular disease and has a long history at Duke, where he completed both his undergraduate degree and his MD. Califf serves as vice chancellor for clinical and translational research and directs the Duke Translational Medicine Institute. You can read Dr. Califf’s blog here.
Marc G. Caron is the James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology in the School of Medicine, as well as a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. He studies how neurotransmitters, chemical messengers like dopamine and serotonin, regulate behavior and play a role in diseases like schizophrenia and depression.
Robert J. Lefkowitz was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work discovering and describing a large family of proteins, known as the G-protein coupled receptors, that regulate cellular responses to outside molecules. His work underlies a third to a half of all prescription drugs today. Lefkowitz is a professor of biochemistry, chemistry, medicine, and pathology at Duke.
Terrie E. Moffitt is a psychologist and the director of two longitudinal studies—one of 1000 New Zealand families and one of over 1000 British families with twins, which she uses to investigate how antisocial and criminal behaviors arise in individuals. She is the Nannerl O. Keohane university professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke.
Eric D. Peterson is a cardiologist specializing in acute coronary systems and geriatric cardiology with nearly 700 peer-reviewed biomedical papers to his credit. He is the director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute and a professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center.