THE ISR ranking: PoliTO ranked first in Italy in interdisciplinary research funding
THE - Times Higher Education agency has released a new international ranking of universities, ISR - Interdisciplinary Science Rankings, launched in association with Schmidt Science Fellows, which measures the contributions and engagement of universities around the world in interdisciplinary research.
This is the first attempt to measure the contributions and commitment of universities in the specific area of interdisciplinary research, aiming to join forces from different areas of research to address global challenges.
A mission at the heart of the work at Politecnico, which in fact placed high in this ranking that evaluates 749 universities around the world, 22 from Italy: Politecnico ranks first in Italy for the “Inputs” indicator, which takes into account the funding capacity of multidisciplinary research, considering both the percentage of income from interdisciplinary research and the amount of funding from companies, normalized by the number of units in the academic and research staff. The other metrics considered in the ranking are “Process,” which measures what support and promotion services each university arranges to foster interdisciplinary research, and “Outputs,” which precisely measures impact in terms of publications and reputation. In the overall ranking, Politecnico ranks 68th in the world (as mentioned out of 749 universities) and 5th in Italy.
To be featured in “THE Interdisciplinary Science Rankings”, certain criteria must be satisfied, such as having subscribed data for THE WUR rankings, having at least 100 interdisciplinary science research publications in the five-year period 2019-2023, having at least 50 academic and research staff in science subjects even if not engaged in interdisciplinary research, and being featured in at least 9 of the 11 metrics considered. The data come from THE World University Ranking (split by Arts & Humanities - Architecture and Engineering & Technology subjects), combined with data from the survey on Interdisciplinary Research and Elsevier's bibliometric data for publications.
“This is an important recognition for our University,” emphasizes PoliTO Rector Stefano Corgnati, “because it highlights the path we have taken more than 8 years ago with the creation of our Interdepartmental Centers, today they are 13, with the aim of promoting a modern way of developing research among cross-disciplinary knowledge, bringing together different disciplines and skills within the University. Multidisciplinarity is a winning model, increasingly necessary to meet the complex challenges of technological transitions, with a focus on the ecological and digital one”.