Two University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa professors were honored among the world’s most influential researchers of 2020. Shidler College of Business Professor Stephen L. Vargo and School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) Professor Fei-Fei Jin were named to the 2020 Web of Science’s Highly Cited Researchers list.
Researchers making the list were identified as scientists who are influencing the future direction of their respective fields. Fewer than 0.1% of the world’s researchers, across 22 research fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.
Shidler Professor Stephen Vargo
This is Vargo’s seventh consecutive year named to the list in the business and economics discipline. Vargo earned the recognition by demonstrating exceptional influence through his publications, which were frequently cited by his peers during the last decade. His articles focused on the “Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic” framework, which redefines how value is co-created through economic exchange.
“We are extremely proud of Professor Vargo. He is an excellent researcher and mentor to our doctoral students as well as our junior faculty,” Shidler College of Business Dean Vance Roley said. “Since 2006, the college has increased the number of faculty endowments from six to 43 and has made substantial investments in faculty research resources.”
Also in 2020, Vargo was ranked eighth on the Stanford List of Worldwide Marketing Scholars, based on career citation metrics. He also received the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award by SERVSIG for his contributions to teaching, research, service and impact in the services discipline. In 2019, Vargo received the Shelby D. Hunt/Harold H. Maynard Award.
Vargo earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oklahoma and a doctorate in marketing from Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma. He is an expert in research pertaining to market and market theory, strategy and service encounter. Vargo has published more than 100 research publications that have been featured in notable journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Retailing and MIS Quarterly. According to Google Scholar, Vargo currently has more than 60,000 citations.
SOEST Professor Fei-Fei Jin
Jin was named to the list in the cross-field category, which identifies researchers who have contributed highly cited papers across several different disciplines. Jin’s research interests cover a wide range of topics, including the dynamics of large-scale atmosphere and ocean circulations, and climate variability. His primary research focuses are understanding the dynamics of El Niño-Southern Oscillation, climate variability in the extratropical atmospheric circulation and global warming.
Jin earned his bachelor’s degree in meteorology from Nanjing Institute of Meteorology and his PhD in atmospheric dynamics from Academia Sinica in Beijing. He joined the faculty of SOEST’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences in 1993. Since then, Jin has published more than 220 research publications that have been featured in notable journals including Nature, Science, Nature Geoscience, Nature of Climate Change, Nature Communication, Science Advance, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Climate and Journal of Geophysical Research. According to Google Scholar, Jin currently has more than 23,500 citations with a H-index of 73. He was elected fellow of American Geophysical Union (2016) and American Meteorological Society (2019), and a recipient of the Sverdrup Gold Medal from American Meteorological Society (2019).
“Having been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Fei-Fei Jin continues to receive acknowledgements and citations for his renowned work on climate change and tropical meteorology,“ SOEST Dean Brian Taylor said.
Also named to the list was Jeyhan Kartaltepe, a 2009 UH Mānoa Institute for Astronomy PhD graduate, who is now faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology.
