Scientists with an international influence

Professors Alain Dufresne and Naceur Belgacem feature in the ranking published by the University of Stanford, which lists the top 2% most cited researchers in the world in their subject field.
The analysis, which was performed by experts from the university, was based on Elsevier’s Scopus, a cross-disciplinary database of abstracts and citations from scientific publications. This study of data from 1996 to 2019 covers around 7 million scientists in 22 fields and 176 subfields. In the subfield of polymers, 1,704 researchers are singled out from a total of 80,670.
Alain Dufresne is ranked 9^th in the world and 1^st out of the 89 French researchers listed, while Naceur Belgacem is ranked 461^st in the world and 27^th nationally.

In addition, for the third year in a row, Alain Dufresne appears in the Highly Cited Researchers ranking, which each year lists the scientists most frequently cited by their peers. Published annually by the Web of Science Group, a Clarivate Analytics company, this list recognises researchers who have produced multiple papers that are among the top 1% most cited in their field, demonstrating that their research has a significant influence on their peers.

Alain Dufresne has a passionate interest in the exceptional properties of nanocrystals and nanofibrils, whose industrial potential is immense. His research centres on the implementation and characterisation of polymer nanocomposites reinforced with nanoparticles extracted from renewable sources (biomass and agricultural residues).
Naceur Belgacem’s expertise revolves around the urgency of finding solutions that reduce the environmental impact of human activities. He leads research on the rational use of biomass, on the valorisation of industrial and agricultural resources, and on surface and adhesion phenomena in lignocellulosic materials.