UWA heads field as state’s top research university

The Group of Eight universities have dominated the first ever national research ranking results released this week, with the University of Western Australia taking out the title of top WA research university.

UWA came sixth in the national rankings, followed by Murdoch University at 17, Curtin at 21 and Edith Cowan at 30 out of 41 contenders.

The University of Notre Dame was one of nine universities to fall “well below” world standard when it came to research. UWA was the only WA university to achieve an above average result.

The Excellence in Research for Australia report, commissioned by Science and Research Minister Kim Carr, compared each discipline of research undertaken at individual universities to an international average.

The review was implemented by the Australian Research Council, which has assessed research quality within Australia’s higher education institutions using a combination of indicator and expert review.

A score of five means well above average, four is above average and three is average, with two and one indicating below or well below the international benchmark.

UWA averaged 3.64 across all assessed areas of research, and achieved a well-above ranking for fields including earth sciences, psychology, medical and health science and agriculture and veterinary science. Other strong fields for UWA included mathematical and environmental sciences, economics, creative arts and writing.

Deputy vice-chancellor (research) Robyn Owens said the university was expecting to finish about where it did on the league table.

Professor Owens was also pleased to see the fields identified as UWA’s top research priorities doing well, such as medical and earth sciences.

“We were also very pleased to see that, where we had strong investment from industry, we also had very high quality research,” she said.

“Industry can be reassured that high quality research is being done.”

Murdoch was the second of WA’s universities in the rankings, and the only institution other than UWA to make it into the top 20.

Murdoch says two-thirds of its research assessed in the report was rated as world standard or above, including eight fields it classes as vital to WA, including immunology, resources engineering and crop and pasture production.

Vice-chancellor John Yovich said the results demonstrated that Murdoch’s strengths were wide-ranging across the university and reflected many of its well established and emerging strengths.

“They are also evidence of the success of our focused research institutes, which are headed by leaders in their respective fields and bring together some of Australia’s finest researchers,” Professor Yovich said.

Murdoch’s lowest score came for economics, where it was classed as well below world average.

Curtin achieved well above average results for earth sciences, but struggled in law, legal studies and psychology.

Edith Cowan received well below average results for religion and philosophy, psychology, human society, and commerce and marketing. The state’s lowest ranking university in terms of research, Notre Dame, received low marks for law and legal studies, commerce, education, and medical and health sciences.

Nationally, Australia’s research in the fields of classical physics, industrial and environmental biotechnology and aerospace engineering was declared some of the best in the world.