Two recent rankings have placed the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering among the world’ s top universities. In a ranking of the top 500 High Impact Universities around the globe based on a research performance index, the Jacobs School ranked ninth in the engineering, computing and technology category.

The research ranking — developed by researchers at the University of Western Australia — is a pilot project to benchmark the research performance of the world’ s leading universities. The basis of the rankings is a numerical measure of the quality and consistency of publication and research output. Universities are ranked on an overall basis and for faculty rankings for different disciplinary groups. The Jacobs School’s ranking puts it between the University of Southern California (8) and Harvard University (10). The Jacobs School was ranked fifth in terms of its research impact among public institutions.

The Jacobs School of Engineering is home to many of the world’s top researchers in their respective fields, from nanoengineering to bioengineering, structural engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering. One of them is Joseph Wang, the most cited engineer from 1991 to 2001 and consistently one of the world’s most cited engineers and chemists. Wang’s research expertise is vast and his publication list prolific. His work includes sensing technologies for applications such as clinical diagnostics, environmental and security monitoring and remote sensing; microfluidics; nanomachines for drug delivery; and the relatively new and rapidly growing field of nanobioelectronics, which is aimed at integrating nano- and biomaterials with electronic transducers. In 2008, Wang’s team made headlines around the world for research demonstrating nanomachines that are dramatically faster and stronger than any previously built.

Meanwhile, Jacobs School electrical and computer engineering professor Mohan Trivedi was named this year the top productive and influential author in the IEEE Transactions in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) journal between 2000-09.  In the same ranking, UC San Diego ranks fifth in the top 10 of the most productive institutions in the IEEE-ITS.

Trivedi also is director of UC San Diego’s Computer Vision and Robotics Research laboratory, and leads research on intelligent transportation and telematics within Calit2. He is known for his work with computer vision, robotics and sensors for a number of cutting-edge applications, including "smart cars" (telematics), intelligent transportation systems, “smart rooms" (intelligent environments), biometrics (facial recognition) and sensor-based intelligent systems.

“The quality and diversity of research at the Jacobs School of Engineering continue to attract some of the greatest minds in the field,” said Jacobs School Dean Frieder Seible. “Engineering is at the core of our technology-driven society. From advances in medicine and management of the environment to national safety and security, engineering provides innovations to improve our quality of life. Engineering's changing role in society clearly shapes our mission as a leading engineering school. The quality of our research is not only recognized by our peers but it also greatly impacts and benefits society around the world.”

The Jacobs School of Engineering also was recently ranked No.10 in the world (seventh among public institutions) in the 2010 Academic Rankings of World Universities in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences (ARWU).

ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of the institution. More than 100 universities worldwide are ranked by ARWU each year. The rankings are jointly issued by the Center for World-Class Universities and the Institute for Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Ton University, China.

U.S. universities dominate the rankings, taking the top 10 slots: MIT (1); Stanford (2); UC Berkeley (3); University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign (4); Georgia Institute of Technology (5); University of Texas at Austin (6); University of Michigan-Anna Arbor (7); Carnegie Mellon University (8); Pennsylvania State University-University Park (9); and UC San Diego (10).