UCL ranked 2nd in UK for Telecommunication Engineering

The 2018 Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities, published last week, has seen UCL cited as the second highest UK University for Telecommunication Engineering research.

In the wider subject area of Electronic and Electrical Engineering UCL was ranked 1st within the UK, and as an institution UCL sits 3rd in the UK and 17th Globally. 

The ShanhaiRanking Consultancy is an independent organisation that has been analysing and presenting an annual list of the worlds top 500 universities since 2003.

While there are multiple university rankings published annually the Shanghai ranking has a sole focus on research, adopting six objective judging criteria. 

These criteria are:

• number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals
• number of Highly Cited Researchers
• number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science
• number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index
• per capita performance

The Company first produced subject rankings in 2017 and since this initial ranking, UCL's Telecomunications Engineering research has moved from 4th in the UK, to this year's place at number two. Impressively raising from 43rd globally to 26th in 2018.

UCL's ranking in Telecommunications Engineering will have been heavily influenced by work undertaken by members of the Institute of Communications and Connected Systems (ICCS) that has seen world records in electronics and telecommunications.

High performing outputs from ICCS, in diverse areas of communications research, will have contributed to the institution's performance, such as work on high-capacity optical communications systems published in Nature Scientific Reports; a research paper on the advances in Terahertz communications, published in Nature Photonics and cited 187 times since 2016; and work on distributed amplifiers for wireless communication. 

UCL Prof Nigel Titchener-Hooker, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Science said:

“This is yet further evidence of the prominence of the Institute, it’s reach and relevance. I am inspired by the progress made and by the enthusiasm of the staff working in the area and look forward to yet more success over the coming period!This is yet further evidence of the prominence of the Institute, it’s reach and relevance. I am inspired by the progress made and by the enthusiasm of the staff working in the area and look forward to yet more success over the coming period!

Adding to the Dean, Prof Izzat Darwazeh, Director of ICCS said: 

It is extremely rewarding to see the work of our members recognised in these rankings. Along with our strong industrial colaborations and world records it is an acolade to the quality of research produced by a unique mix of over 100 researchers, contributing together in the combination of both optical networks, wireless systems and further applications of communications and connected systems.

The Academic World Ranking is the only such analysis to list the performance of Telecommunications Engineering in isolation from other forms of Engineering, it, therefore, offers a good indication to how work, undertaken by members of ICCS, is perceived by the wider academic community. 

At an institutional level, UCL appears in several world rankings compiled using varying methods with UCL continually being cited in the top 25 Global Universities, often much higher. Further information on UCL's Institutional World Ranking can be found at the UCL main webpage.