Overview
- Scientific American announced its first Young American Scientists list on June 16, 2026, profiling 28 early-career researchers working in the United States.
- Editors combined hundreds of expert nominations with a computational sweep of highly cited papers using the OpenAlex API to identify candidate first authors.
- The team used a range of measures beyond citations, including publication venues, h-index, funding, patents and nomination letters, and an LLM (Qwen3.5) provided advisory scores that did not decide outcomes.
- Final choices were made after editors interviewed each nominee, ran background checks and replaced a few initially selected candidates who declined or did not respond.
- The project was produced with presenting-sponsor support from Regeneron and is framed by broader coverage on U.S. science challenges such as funding pressures, talent flows and public trust.