News Release
UCSD Receives Top 10 Rankings in Bioengineering, Bioinformatics and Computer Systems in U.S. News Survey of Graduate Programs
March 31, 2006 – In the annual survey of graduate programs released March 31 by U.S. News & World Report, three Ph.D. programs in the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering ranked among the top 10 in the nation. Overall, the Jacobs School ranked 11th among 187 engineering schools, and 6th in the nation among public universities. With $128.8 million in federal, state and industry research support in FY05, the Jacobs School ranks 3rd in the nation for research expenditures per faculty member.
Among the engineering specialties, the Department of Bioengineering once again ranked 2nd in the nation for biomedical engineering. The department has ranked among the top five programs in the nation every year for the past decade, and is considered an international model for biomedical engineering education.
For the first time since 2002, U.S. News also surveyed Ph.D. programs in the sciences. UCSD ranked 6th in the category of genomics and bioinformatics, reflecting the national prominence of UCSD’s interdisciplinary Bioinformatics program which is offered jointly by eight UCSD departments including the Jacobs School’s bioengineering and computer science and engineering departments.
The Jacobs School’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) was ranked 9th in the nation for computer systems, and rose significantly in the computer science ranking to 13th in the nation, up seven places since 2002. Over the past seven years, the department has hired 27 new faculty members, established leadership positions in fields ranging from networking to cryptography, and launched new programs and research initiatives in focus areas such as embedded systems, bioinformatics, and computer vision. In addition to computer systems, the department ranked highly in all computer science specialties surveyed by U.S. News including theory (14), programming language (17) and artificial intelligence (19).
All of the Jacobs School departments had Ph.D. programs ranked among the top 20 including: the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, which ranked 16th in mechanical engineering and 19th in aerospace engineering; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), which ranked 16th in electrical engineering and communications, and 17th in computer engineering, a program offered in both ECE and CSE; and the Department of Structural Engineering, ranked 17th in the specialty of civil engineering.
UCSD’s graduate programs in medicine, biological sciences and physical sciences were also highly ranked in the survey. UCSD is one of only five research universities to have both a medical school and engineering school ranked in the top 15. The UCSD School of Medicine ranked 14th overall, 5th among public research-focused medical schools and 1st in the nation for research grants per faculty member. In addition, the School of Medicine’s program in AIDS ranked 6th and in drug and alcohol abuse ranked 8th.
In addition to bioinformatics and genomics, UCSD received top 10 rankings for its interdisciplinary programs in neurosciences and neurobiology, which ranked 2nd in the nation. The UCSD Division of Biological Sciences also ranked highly in cell biology (10) and 12th among biology programs in the nation. The UCSD Division of Physical Sciences ranked 2nd in the nation for discrete mathematics and combinatorics, and its biochemistry program ranked 7th (up from 15th in 2002). UCSD ranked 5th in geophysics and seismology; and ranked highly for its programs in physics (16), chemistry (18) and mathematics (21).
The professional school rankings are based on surveys of peers and of professionals outside academe, and objective criteria such as research activity and student selectivity. The ranking of Ph.D. programs in the sciences result from peer assessment surveys.
The rankings appear in U.S. News’ 2007 America’s Best Graduate Schools guidebook and in the April 10 edition of the U.S. News weekly magazine. The survey results also appear on-line at www.usnews.com.
Media Contacts
Denine Hagen
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-2920
dhagen@ucsd.edu