The metallurgy program in UT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering has proven golden once again, as it was recently ranked the No. 1 program in the US for the third year in a row.

The department was sixth in the world overall, with five universities in China ahead of it, but was only a few points removed from the third spot, globally.

“Our faculty and researchers have put in countless hours of hard work into this important field,” said Veerle Keppens, head of the department. “Having those efforts recognized like this is rewarding and a well-deserved accolade.”

Students can take metallurgy-related classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, with coursework including phase transformations, mechanical behavior, and welding metallurgy.

For metallurgy, rankings are based on scores from a combination of four categories:

• The number of papers authored;
• the ratio of published papers to papers cited;
• the number of international collaborations; and
• the number of papers published in top journals.

UT was one of only two universities with a perfect score in the category involving citations, and the department also had a strong showing in terms of collaborations. The second-ranked US program came well behind UT at 13th overall, with only four US institutions making the top 20.

“Having your work cited by others and being involved in collaborations are signs that others view the work you are doing as being both essential and valid,” said Keppens. “We feel like we have a key role to play in this area, and these numbers corroborate that.”

Now in its 17th year, the Academic Ranking of World Universities puts out annual lists of the world’s best universities for a wide variety of disciplines across engineering, arts, sciences, medical, and agricultural disciplines.