29 July 2016
The University of South Australia has rocketed to fourth place in Australia in the Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars listings for the Asia Pacific region and is the youngest Australian university to make the list.
The Nature Index Rising Stars assessment examines the increase by a university’s researchers in research published in a selection of the world’s top scientific journals – including titles such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Cell, Advanced Materials, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
The assessment was made for the years 2012 and 2015 and the contributions from UniSA researchers had improved enormously.
UniSA Vice Chancellor Professor David Lloyd says the rise in the rankings is more great news for UniSA in its 25th birthday year.
“As Australia’s youngest ‘rising star’ in these rankings, it shows that we’ve made some really big strides in the quality of our research,” Prof Lloyd says.
“This result also underlines the huge improvements UniSA showed in the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment in 2015 which found 97 per cent of our assessed research was well class or above world class.
“The profile in the Rising Stars rankings of Australian and ATN universities in our region also reflects so well on the world class quality and relevance of the research being conducted by Australia’s higher education system.
“And that is really important, because in an increasingly competitive international setting and changing world economy, Australia needs to continue to invest in and support new generations of researchers.”
Prof Lloyd says the Rising Stars ranking acknowledges the sophisticated work being undertaken by UniSA researchers at its new Future Industries Institute, at the Centre for Cancer Biology, the Sansom Institute for Health Research and in key areas such as population health and genomics.
“What this shows quite clearly is that universities that are committed to industry-relevant and solutions-focussed research, can also deliver quality research outcomes at the highest level.”
Media contact: Michèle Nardelli mobile: +61 418 823 673 email: michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
