The University of Tartu is one of the two Central and Eastern European universities to enter the Times Higher Education Rankings in computer science, having been ranked among the top 250 universities in the world.
The British journal, the Times Higher Education, has compiled rankings that are considered the most reputable and influential in the world since 2004. In the computer science rankings, the first 200 are ranked individually and the rest are grouped in bands of 50. The University of Tartu was placed in the 201–250 range in the latest rankings.
In the current rankings, computer science is the University of Tartu’s highest-ranked specialisation. To compile the table, the Times Higher Education employs 13 performance indicators, which describe learning environment, research influence, volume of research, academic reputation, income, innovation and international outlook.
While the University of Tartu has been among the top 500 universities in the overall rankings for several years already, its computer science reached the subject ranking for the first time, being one of the two EU Central and Eastern European universities beside Warsaw University to have made it to the table. The top three in the rankings are Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from the US and the University of Oxford from the United Kingdom.
The high level of computer science at the University of Tartu has also gained attention elsewhere in Europe. In October, the head of its Institute of Computer Science, professor Jaak Vilo, was elected the board member of Informatics Europe, the association of institutes of computer science and IT faculties of European universities.
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Cover: University of Tartu’s main building in Tartu.
