King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has been ranked 119 among 500 academic institutions globally in the Nature Index table for 2020. This places KAUST first in Saudi Arabia, as the university obtains 84 percent of the Kingdom’s fractional count share. The recent ranking also places KAUST globally at 69 in physical sciences, 87 in chemistry, and 89 in earth and environmental sciences.
“We are delighted to see the strength of our research outputs recognized by the latest Nature Index table,” said KAUST Vice President for Research and Distinguished Professor of Materials Physics and Device Engineering Donal Bradley. “The ability and dedication of our faculty members, research staff and students allow KAUST to successfully contribute, alongside world-class academic peers, to pushing the boundaries of knowledge to address the critical challenges facing the Kingdom and the world.”
The Nature Index Annual Tables showcase institutions with the highest outputs of top-quality research. The index tracks the output of the top 50 countries globally showing that KAUST’s Nature Index FC output is greater than the entire FC output of 17 countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and the UAE.
In 2019, the Nature Index Normalized Ranking ranked KAUST first in Saudi Arabia and 18 among world leaders in natural sciences, considering the number of high-quality articles published as a proportion of an institute’s overall output.
Established in 2009, KAUST is a graduate research university devoted to finding solutions for some of the world’s most pressing scientific and technological challenges in the areas of food, water, energy and the environment. With 19 research areas related to these themes and state-of-the art labs, KAUST has created a collaborative and interdisciplinary problem-solving environment, which has resulted in more than 11,000 published papers to date.
With more than 100 different nationalities living, working and studying on campus, KAUST has brought together the best minds and ideas from around the world with the goal of advancing science and technology through distinctive and collaborative research. The university has proved to be a catalyst for innovation, economic development and social prosperity in Saudi Arabia and the world.
