Hoffmann is a Founder Professor in materials science and engineering and a member of the Materials Research Laboratory. His research focuses on topics related to magnetism, such as spin transport, magnetization dynamics and biomedical applications. His work on spin Hall effects has contributed to the development of spintronics, electronic devices that harness electron spin for faster and more efficient computing. Hoffmann is a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Van der Zande specializes in multidisciplinary nanoscience; specifically, his group uses two-dimensional materials, such as membranes and thin films, as molecular building blocks to construct new devices with applications in electronics, sensing, energy and more. He has affiliations with the Materials Research Laboratory, the Holonyak Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory, the Beckman Institute and the department of electrical and computer engineering.
The list recognizes researchers “who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers,” according to Web of Science. It selected 6,216 researchers for their performance in 21 fields and for cross-field influence in scholarly publications from 2008 to 2018.
Eight faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list, a global listing of scientists who produced the past decade’s most influential papers, compiled by the Web of Science group, a Clarivate Analytics company.