UB's civil engineering program ranks in the top five among U.S. schools; 12th worldwide

University at Buffalo Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering assistant professor Anthony Tessari discusses SEESL's laminar box with two students.

Assistant Professor Anthony Tessari discusses UB's laminar box with graduate students. Credit: the Onion Studio 

This is the second consecutive year UB’s civil engineering program has ranked within the top 20 globally and inside the top 10 nationally

By Peter Murphy

Published July 26, 2018 This content is archived.

UB has the fifth ranked civil engineering program in the country and the 12th ranked program in the world, according to the 2018 global rankings from the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), referred to as the Shanghai Ranking.

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“We are excited to be recognized in this way for our faculty's accomplishments. This is encouraging news as we continue to look at new ways to collaborate and maintain our place as a top research department. ”
Joseph Atkinson, Professor and Chair
Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering

The Shanghai Ranking Consultancy distributes rankings of universities in 54 subjects across engineering and natural, life, medical and social sciences. Over 4,000 universities were ranked in 2018.

While some ranking programs may rely on subjective assessments, the ARWU ranking is based largely on five categories of quantifiable university and program research outcomes. The Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering improved its score in the international collaboration and the number of papers published in top academic journals (TOP) criteria. Some of the other categories include highly cited researchers and scientific awards and per-capita performance. UB’s civil engineering program received the highest TOP score (100) out of the 300 ranked institutions.

In order to be included in the subject ranking, universities had to have a minimum number of research publications during the 2012 – 2016 period. The publication threshold is different for each subject area. The threshold for civil engineering was 100, doubling the 2017 publication minimum.

“We are excited to be recognized in this way for our faculty’s accomplishments,” says Joseph Atkinson, professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, “this is encouraging news as we continue to look at new ways to collaborate and maintain our place as a top research department.”

The AWRU ranking was originally created to evaluate top Chinese universities, but the organization now ranks universities around the world. The Shanghai Ranking Consultancy began publishing the ranking in 2009.

The full 2018 ARWU report and methodology is available online