Jizhong Zhou is a George Lynn Cross Research Professor and Presidential Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and holds positions in the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and the School of Computer Science. He is also the director of OU’s Institute for Environmental Genomics. He is known for developing experimental and computational metagenomic technologies to address frontier ecological, environmental and engineering questions. In 2023, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of Ecology, the American Academy of Microbiology, the International Water Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2022, he received the ISME-IWA BioCluster Grand Prize Award and the Soil Science Research Award. In 2021, he was the only microbiologist named to Reuters’ List of World’s Top 1,000 Climate Scientists, and was ranked among the top 40 scientists worldwide and top 19 across the U.S. in ecology and evolution by research.com. He is recognized internationally as a top 0.1% globally highly cited researcher on Elsevier’s Scopus and Web of Science. He is the 2019 recipient of the ASM Award for Environmental Research, the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award in 2014, an R&D 100 Award in 2009, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2001. He has an h-index of 142.
Thirumalai “Venky” Venkatesan is a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and faculty in the Center for Quantum Research and Technology. He has been named Fellow of the Royal Society, Singapore National Academy of Sciences, American Physical Society, Materials Research Society, World Innovation Foundation, Asia Pacific Academy of Artificial Intelligence, National Academy of Inventors and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. He was a member of the Physics Policy Committee and is a founding member of the International Oxide Electronics Workshop. He is also the inventor of the pulsed laser deposition process and is a leader in its application to thin films of complex oxides and related multi-component materials. He has an h-index of 120.
Michael Mumford is a professor emeritus who has served as a George Lynn Cross Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology and director of the Center for Applied Social Research. He is a recipient of the Academy of Management's Eminent Leadership Scholar Award for lifetime contributions to the study of organizational leadership and the American Psychological Association's Arnheim Award for lifetime contributions to the study of creativity and innovation. He has served as President of the Society for Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. He has an h-index of 112.
Xiangming Xiao is a George Lynn Cross Research professor in the School of Biological Sciences, the director of the Center for Earth Observation and Modeling, and an associate director of the Institute for Resilient Environmental and Energy Systems at OU. He uses satellite data to measure and monitor land cover and land use change in the world. He combines in-situ observations, satellite data, and models to understand and predict global terrestrial carbon fluxes and stocks under changing landscapes and climate. He integrates the “One Health”, “Big Earth” data, and data science to study the ecology and evolution of zoonotic infectious diseases and develop the advanced modeling capacity for risk assessment and early warning of infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics. He has an h-index of 100.
