EPFL chemistry ranked #1 in Europe
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EPFL has been ranked #1 in Chemistry across Europe by the U.S News & World Report.
The U.S. News & World Report has ranked EPFL number 1 in chemistry in Europe, and number 10 in the world. The U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings on education has been published annually since 1983 and has become a staple for American readers. For example, when it was published in 2014, the website received 2.6 million unique visitors and 18.9 million page views in a single day.
The majority of EPFL’s chemistry output is represented by — but not limited to — its Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC), where chemistry research covers multiple fields, and it has become one of the world’s leading institutions across the chemical sciences. For example, the satellite campus of EPFL in Valais now hosts a number of ISIC chemists who work in the fields of renewable energy, chemical catalysts for energy storage, computational molecular simulations, and nanocrystal synthesis.
The Institute is particularly well known for housing the research of Michael Grätzel, inventor of the dye-sensitized solar cells that bear his name. In 2016, citations of Professor Grätzel’s an H-index reached 200 with citations of his papers passing 190,000.
In addition, many faculty have recently won prestigious awards. For example, Paul Dyson has been awarded the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society, the Award for Outstanding Achievements in Bioorganometallic Chemistry, and the Bioinorganic Chemistry Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry among others. In 2016, Dyson was also listed in the Web of Science’s Highly Cited Researchers. His research covers organometallic chemistry at the interface of medicine, catalysis, and material science.
Physical chemistry is also a major feature of EPFL. The research of Lyndon Emsley, who directs ISIC, has led to the development of new NMR spectroscopy techniques that can determine the structure and dynamics of the atomic structure of complex materials and molecular systems, contributing to new processes across different disciplines, from material science to medical and clinical applications.
“It’s really satisfying to see that the research and teaching of our broad-based chemistry and chemical engineering department, which is driven by world-class faculty in all areas, is now being recognized across the world,” says Emsley. “This is the result of EPFL investing in ISIC continuously over the last twenty years, and that is now really paying off.”