'Essential Science Indicators (ESI) selects the top 1% of articles by total citations in each annual cohort from each of the 22 disciplines as 'Highly Cited Papers'.' (http://archive.sciencewatch.com/about/met/core-hcp/). The ‘Highly Cited Papers' is believed to be an independent measure of research quality/outcome and impact, which is recognized as being important as reflected by citations.

We are deeply honored that six of our recent independent publications (listed at the bottom of the page) are among the 'Highly Cited Papers' by ESI and the same six papers, at the same time, are also selected as 'Top Papers' by ESI. There were 143 papers with KAUST affiliation on the list of the ESI Highly Cited Papers as of March 4, 2016 (https://esi.incites.thomsonreuters.com/IndicatorsAction.action). 

Given the fact that our first KAUST paper was published only in early 2012, we feel very proud of ourselves to be recognized by 'Highly Cited Papers' and 'Top Papers' for our research work in the past 4 years, which demonstrates the excellence, independence, and sustainability of our research.

• Zhang, L.B., Zhong, Y.J., Cha, D.K., Wang, P.* A self-cleaning underwater superoleophobic mesh for oil-water separation, Scientific Reports, 2013, 3, 2326; DOI:10.1038/ srep02326.   
  
• Dua, R. Zhang, Z.H., Zhang, L.B., Zhu, H.B., Zhang, H.N., Wang P.* Carbon layer protected cuprous oxide nanowire arrays for efficient water reduction, ACS Nano, 2013, 7(2), 1709-1717. (Rubal Dua and Zhonghai Zhang were equal contributors).[PDF]
• Zhang, Z.H., Zhang, L.B., Hedhili, M.N., Zhang, H.N., Wang P.* Plasmonic gold nanocrystals coupled with photonic crystal seamlessly on TiO₂nanotube photoelectrodes for efficient visible light photoelectrochemical water splitting, Nano Letters, 2013, 13(1), 14-20. [PDF] [SI]
  
• Zhang, L.B., Zhang, Z.H., Wang, P.* Smart surfaces with switchable superoleophilicity and superoleophobicity in aqueous media: toward controllable oil/water separation, NPG Asia Materials, 2012, 4, e8; doi:10.1038/am.2012.14. [PDF] [SI] 
• Zhang, Z.H., Wang, P.* Optimization of photoelectrochemical water splitting performance on hierarchical TiO₂ nanotube array, Energy & Environmental Science, 2012, 5, 6506-6512. [PDF] [SI]
• Zhang, Z.H., Wang, P.* Highly stable copper oxide composite as an effective photocathode for water splitting via a facile electrochemical synthesis strategy, Journal of Material Chemistry, 2012, 22 (6), 2456-2464. [SI] [Link]

https://esi.incites.thomsonreuters.com/IndicatorsAction.action