Empa study among the "Top Ten

Last year, Empa researcher Bernd Nowack made it onto the list of "Highly Cited Researchers" at "Clarivate Analytics" for the sixth year in succession. Nowack is being honored with another award of this kind: the scientific journal "Environmental Science and Technology" has analyzed all the 41,000 or so publications ever published in the magazine since 1969 - and has chosen the ten with the greatest influence in research circles. These include the study "Environmental Concentrations of Engineered Nanomaterials (TiO2, ZnO, Ag, CNT, Fullerenes) for Different Regions" by the two Empa researchers Bernd Nowack and Fadri Gottschalk together with Roland Scholz and Tobias Sonderer.

The study dealt with the modeling of material flows of artificially produced nanomaterials released into the environment. At that time, almost nothing was known about whether and in what quantities artificially produced nanoparticles could be released into the environment and how they were distributed in the various ecosystems. The team developed a model to simulate and predict the environmental concentrations of various artificially produced nanoparticles in surface waters, sewage plant effluents, sludge, soil and air. These findings were central to the further development of the entire field of research into the environmental effects of nanomaterials, which explains the 1640 mentions in the Empa publication according to Scopus - one of the largest databases of scientific literature. This makes it one of those publications which, according to the editors of the scientific journal, has had an enormous impact - or, as they write in their editorial "Making Waves", has made a huge impact through its "new approaches, its influence on the respective research field and the use of modern statistical methods".