A professor from Iowa State was recently announced as one of the Institute for Scientific Information’s 100 most cited people in the past 20 years.

Daniel Armstrong is a professor and Caldwell chair of chemistry at Iowa State. He has over 300 publications and is considered the father of micelle- and cyclodextrin-based separations.

Armstrong prefers to research a few different areas at once.

“Whatever we’re getting into, we are doing a lot of different things, which allows you to change to another area.”

Armstrong has many projects, within three general areas of research. Chiral separation, his most developed project, has aided in reducing the side effects of many drugs and produced several commercial products. A second project involves using a chemical instrument in the separation of microorganisms – an unusual technique that has helped biological researchers speed up their separations. Many of these separations can now often be achieved in a matter of minutes with the help of Armstrong’s research. His third area of research is in the use of ionic liquids in analytical chemistry.

Armstrong believes that works that are cited are “very useful to other people because they solve a problem or answer a question.”

“The ability to do a lot of things that interest you and to contribute, that’s what makes it fun,” Armstrong said. “How do you know you’ve made a contribution? People cite you.”