International honours for Chemistry

We have been placed in the 51st-75th category in the ARWU World’s Top 200 Universities in Chemistry list and are the fourth highest ranking department among UK universities.

For the second consecutive year, the University of Southampton, as a whole, is ranked in the top 150 of universities overall.

“I'm delighted that Chemistry has moved up a division in the ARWU ranking this year and is now placed fourth in the UK,” says Head of Chemistry, Professor Phil Gale. “This confirms our position as one of the leading Chemistry departments in the UK and reflects the excellence of the research conducted here. Most of all it demonstrates the high level of creativity, innovation and the hard work over last few years of our all our academic staff and I am delighted that this has been recognised by the ARWU.”

To be considered for inclusion in the prestigious AWRU lists, an institution must have Nobel Laureates, Fields Medal recipients and Highly-Cited Researchers. Major universities with significant amount of papers indexed by Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) are also included.

Chemistry at Southampton is well-known for its cutting-edge research. The latest UK Government’s national assessment of research quality (REF 2014) judged 94 per cent of our overall submission as world-leading or internationally excellent; this places Southampton in 8th position for research power and 6th for research intensity in Chemistry. Topics submitted for this assessment covered a broad spectrum of research into many of the world’s most important scientific challenges.

Chemistry holds an Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network) Silver Award, recognising our continuing efforts at Southampton to support the career aspirations of female chemists, eliminating gender bias and promoting opportunities for all.