Civil engineering program recognized as 4th best in the country, 11th in the world

By Peter Murphy

Published June 26, 2019 This content is archived.

UB’s civil engineering program is ranked number four in the country and 11th in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), or Shanghai Ranking.

This is the second consecutive year UB’s civil engineering program has ranked inside the top five nationally and inside the top 15 globally.

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“It is very encouraging to see the department consistently recognized in this way, particularly since the ranking is based on real metrics characterizing activities and accomplishments of our faculty. ”
Joseph Atkinson, Professor and Chair
Depatment of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering

The Shanghai Ranking Consultancy is an independent organization that distributes rankings of institutions across 54 subjects in engineering and life, medical, natural and social sciences. Over 4,000 universities were ranked in 2019.

ARWU is one of the most influential global ranking systems, with criteria based largely on university research outcomes. UB’s civil engineering program received the highest score in the number of papers published in top academic journals (TOP) category, and increased its score by almost five points in the international collaboration category. Some of the other categories include: the number of papers authored by an institution, ratio of citation of papers published by an institution in an academic subject, and the total number of significant awards in an academic subject.

To be eligible for the civil engineering ranking, universities must have a minimum 100 research publications for the period of 2013-2017.

“It is very encouraging to see the department consistently recognized in this way, particularly since the ranking is based on real metrics characterizing activities and accomplishments of our faculty,” says Joseph Atkinson, professor and chair of the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, “we have worked hard to build the quality of our department.”

The ARWU 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.

Only the top 50 institutions in each program area were individually ranked. Other ranked subject areas within the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences include:

  • Biomedical: #76-100, 300 universities ranked
  • Biotechnology: #401-500, 500 universities ranked
  • Computer Science & Engineering: #76-100, 500 universities ranked
  • Electrical: #201-300, 500 universities ranked
  • Environmental: #301-400, 500 universities ranked
  • Materials science engineering: #201-300, 500 universities ranked
  • Nanoscience and nanotechnology: #151-200, 400 universities ranked
  • Telecommunication engineering: #101-150, 300 universities ranked
  • Transportation science and technology: #76-100, 200 universities ranked

The full 2019 ARWU report and methodology is available online.