Research excellence spurs jump in THE rankings

The University of Sydney has jumped four places in the 2023 edition of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University rankings, to 54^th position globally out of 1,799 institutions worldwide.  

Research excellence was a major contributor to the result, with research being the University’s strongest overall indicator, cementing our status as a world-leading, research-intensive university. The University also scored highly for international outlook, reflecting the University’s established position as a global institution.  

“Our research activity and international connections, including partnerships and research collaborations, underpin this outcome and I congratulate our academic and professional staff on our competitiveness in this ranking. As we commit to our next 10-year strategy, aspiring to be one of the world’s great universities, we have an excellent foundation to build on,” said Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Mark Scott AO. 

The University has been at the forefront of COVID-19 research, from advising governments on public health measures and developing variant-proof vaccines, in collaboration with industry. And to fast-track the path to Net-Zero, we are pioneering advances in waste management, solar panel and battery technology. 

We collaborate with some of the best research universities in the world, including Harvard University, National University of Singapore and UCL, and have the largest student mobility program in Australia.  

Professor Emma Johnston AO, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), said: “Improvement in the rankings is one way the excellence of our research activity is acknowledged, alongside indicators such as our strong record of successful start-ups and spin-outs, our twenty-nine academics named as world-leading experts and the $40 million we were recently awarded under the Medical Research Future Fund.”

“They are an encouraging recognition of the importance and quality of our efforts as the University strives to address pressing global challenges with new discoveries and translational research.”

“Examples of recent exemplary research include studies that monitored 78,500 adults to confirm 10,000 steps at a quick pace lowers risk of disease, critical contributions to two pioneering studies identifying genetic signatures explaining ethnic differences in the severity of prostate cancer, our contribution to a Nature prehistory paper on the discovery in Borneo of the earliest evidence of an amputation, and a PhD student developing a tool to assist surgeons in planning complex jawbone reconstruction by generating a ‘digital twin’ of the patient using CT scan data.” 

This is the 20^th edition of the annual Times Higher Education (THE) rankings which judge universities across citations, research, teaching, international outlook and industry. 

In other rankings results this year, the University of Sydney performed strongly in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) for the third year, improving nine places globally to 60^th, as well as the ShanghaiRanking Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, recording 14 research areas in the top 50 globally, including nursing (7th), telecommunication engineering (9th) and transportation science and technology (10th). In the QS World University Rankings released in June, the University ranked 41st in the world.

This year Australia has seven universities in the world top 100, up from six last year, and 10 universities in the world top 200 – making it the joint-fifth most-represented country in the top 200.