CSU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Bruce Ellingwood ranked as the sixth most-cited civil engineering author in a Stanford University worldwide citation survey, published in PLoS. Scopus citation data for 6 million scientists in 22 major fields and 176 sub-fields were analyzed. 100,000 scientists were sorted and ranked by a composite point index, excluding self-citations.
Ellingwood was honored to be listed in the company of colleagues he highly respects but hesitant to put much stock in the rankings. The ranking certainly is an indicator of his many contributions to the field, but such measurements are often dubious or misinterpreted.
“Naturally, I was very pleased but was somewhat skeptical about my place in these rankings because they can be so easily manipulated,” Ellingwood said.
The survey covered citations from 1996 to 2017 and was filtered by six different weights, taking into account the first, last or corresponding author, the number of authors per paper and reciprocal citations.
“The results of this citation survey conducted by Stanford simply further attest to Bruce’s preeminent national and international stature as a researcher and scholar,” said Professor Charles Shackelford, head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Bruce has significantly increased the visibility of our department, especially in structural engineering and structural mechanics, and he has had a major impact on our students and faculty. We feel fortunate to include him as a member of our faculty and department.”
Ellingwood’s research and professional interests focus on the application of probability and statistics to structural engineering, particularly in structural reliability theory and probabilistic risk assessment. He is internationally recognized as an authority on structural load modeling, reliability and risk analysis of engineered facilities, and as a leader in the technical development and implementation of probability-based codified design standards for building structures. He is editor of Structural Safety and serves on six other editorial boards. In addition, he’s a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Ellingwood has taught part time at CSU since retiring from Georgia Tech in 2013, and he has co-directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology-sponsored Center of Excellence for Risk-based Community Resilience Planning since February 2015.
“It has been a marvelous opportunity to continue to advise graduate students on their research and to mentor younger faculty,” Ellingwood said of his time at CSU. “I’ve also enjoyed my involvement in the NIST center immensely, as it has allowed me to think outside the traditional boundaries of my discipline of structural reliability and risk analysis. All in all, it’s been a rewarding experience for me and, I hope, for CSU as well.”
