Research Driving Impact

Baylor Researchers are on a trajectory toward greater global impact as faculty at a Christian Research 1 university. The burgeoning number of honors and grants awarded to Baylor faculty and students indicate this impact is growing in areas that address needs in health, human flourishing, technology and more. Here are just a few recent examples.

Great Citations

In a database compiled each year by Stanford University, 43 current or retired Baylor faculty and postdoctoral researchers appear among the top 2% most-cited researchers in the world across 22 scientific fields and 174 sub-fields. The impact is multidisciplinary — faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Robbins College of Health and Human Sciences, School of Education, Hankamer School of Business and Diana R. Garland School of Social Work faculty are all represented among the top 2% of researchers.

Sleep and Gratitude

Sarah Schnitker, Ph.D., and Michael Scullin, Ph.D., both serve in Baylor’s department of psychology and neuroscience, but they focus on very different areas in their highly regarded research: Scullin on sleep, and Schnitker on virtue and character development. When a Baylor undergraduate student consulted both of them on one project, the result, not surprisingly, blended their work in a novel way. Alexander Do, B.S. ’24, now a first-year medical student at UTHealth Houston, found that as few as 46 extra minutes of sleep per night can lead to an array of improvements in well-being, including gratitude, resilience and prosocial behavior. His work was supported by the National Science Foundation and John Templeton Foundation while serving as his honors thesis.

Personalized Gut Treatment

Patients with diseases like IBS, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis and more know all too well that current treatments don’t always meet their unique needs. Because everyone’s gut microbiome (the collection of microorganisms found in the gut) is distinct, one-size-fits-all approaches don’t always address the root causes of suffering. Aaron Wright, Ph.D., the Schofield Endowed Chair in Biomedical Science, hopes to change that. Wright earned a National Institutes of Health award for innovative research endeavors to partner with colleagues at New York’s Weill Cornell Medical Center in search of personalized approaches to treatment to identify and deliver select bacteria based on the individual.