Dr. Robert Wallace, professor of materials science and engineering and holder of the Erik Jonsson Distinguished Chair at The University of Texas at Dallas, has been listed among Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate’s Institute for Scientific Information for the fourth year in a row.
The annual list highlights researchers whose names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index. The “who’s who” list identifies some 6,600 researchers from around the world who demonstrated significant influence in their field.
Wallace is listed among scholars in the cross-field category, which includes researchers who produced papers in several fields. He had 442 publications that were cited 31,760 times from January 2010 to December 2020.
Wallace’s team in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science engages in materials research for the most advanced electronic devices used for logic and memory. He was also a team leader who discovered that hafnium silicates and oxides could be used in transistors to enable smaller nanoscale devices, which are used in the processor chips in a wide range of devices including cellphones, tablets and laptops.
Wallace is a founding member of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, which has grown to have more than a dozen faculty members and 75 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
Team Places 3rd in Cybersecurity Competition
A team of three University of Texas at Dallas students placed third in an international cybersecurity competition for its policy brief and presentation on ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure.
The students were honored in November at the virtual Cybersecurity Awareness Worldwide (CSAW) student-run competition hosted by New York University’s Center for Cybersecurity.
Members of the UT Dallas team were Alexander Baumann, a bioinformatics and computational biology master’s student in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics; and Tahlla Taylor and James Wrabel, both cyber security, technology and policy master’s students in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Taylor and Wrabel are students in the Cyber Security Scholarship Program.
The team made recommendations on how the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in May could have been prevented, with solutions that included mandatory audits, multifactor authentication implementation and subsidizing cybersecurity costs for companies that comply with federal standards.
“The team would like to thank Nate Howe, chief information security officer at UTD, for his feedback and help in understanding the depth of the topic,” Taylor said.
The award marks the third time UT Dallas students have received honors at CSAW. In 2014, Frederico Araujo PhD’16 placed second in the Best Applied Research Paper competition when he was a doctoral student. Another team won a best paper award at the 2012 competition.
Accolades is an occasional News Center feature that highlights recent accomplishments of The University of Texas at Dallas faculty and students. To submit items for consideration, contact your school’s communications manager.