Sankar Das Sarma, Richard E. Prange Chair in Physics, Distinguished University Professor, Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute, and Director of the Condensed Matter Theory Center was included on Thomson Reuter’s 2015 list of Highly Cited Researchers, a compilation of influential names in science.

Das Sarma’s research interests include condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics, and quantum information. A theoretical condensed matter physicist, Das Sarma has worked in the areas of strongly correlated materials, graphene, semiconductor physics, low-dimensional systems, topological matter, quantum Hall effect, nanoscience, spintronics, collective properties of ultra-cold atomic and molecular systems, optical lattice, many-body theory, Majorana fermion, and quantum computation. In 2005, Das Sarma, with colleagues Chetan Nayak and Michael Freedman of Microsoft Research, introduced the nu=5/2 topological qubit that led to experiments in building a fault-tolerant quantum computer based on two-dimensional semiconductor structures.

Das Sarma, a physics faculty member at UMD since 1980, received his undergraduate degree in physics in 1973 from Presidency College in Kolkata, India and his Ph.D. in theoretical condensed physics in 1979 from Brown University.

The Highly Cited Researchers list features 3,126 authors from 21 science disciplines whose published work in their specialty areas has consistently been judged by their peers to be of particular use and significance. These researchers earned the distinction by writing the greatest numbers of reports officially designated by Essential Science Indicators as Highly Cited Papers—ranking among the top 1 percent most cited for their subject field and year of publication. The 2015 Highly Cited Researchers list incorporates all of the feedback received between September 8, 2015 and December 1, 2015.

The Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers list is one of several criteria used by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University to determine the Academic Ranking of World Universities.