The Times Higher Education World University Rankings' Life Sciences table judges world class universities across all of their core missions - teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The ranking of the world's top 50 universities for life sciences employs 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators to provide the most comprehensive and balanced comparisons available, which are trusted by students, academics, university leaders, industry and governments.

Top 50 life sciences universities

Rank Institution Location Overall score
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology United States
95.1
2 Harvard University United States
94.7
3 Stanford University United States
91.7
4 University of Oxford United Kingdom
91.4
5 Yale University United States
90.5
5 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
90.5
7 University of California, Berkeley United States
90.3
8 Johns Hopkins University United States
87.8
9 Imperial College London United Kingdom
87.7
10 Princeton University United States
87.3
11 University College London United Kingdom
85.9
12 University of California, Los Angeles United States
83.6
13 Duke University United States
83.5
14 University of California, San Diego United States
82.1
15 University of Washington United States
81.4
16 University of Michigan United States
81.3
17 Cornell University United States
79.9
18 Columbia University United States
79.5
19 University of British Columbia Canada
79.3
20 University of Toronto Canada
78.4
21 University of Pennsylvania United States
75.8
23 McGill University Canada
75.3
24 University of California, Davis United States
74.3
25 University of Chicago United States
73.7
26 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom
73.0
27 Washington University in St Louis United States
72.0
28 Karolinska Institute Sweden
71.6
29 The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
71.4
30 University of Tokyo Japan
71.2
31 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill United States
70.9
32 University of Melbourne Australia
70.8
33 Boston University United States
69.9
34 ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich Switzerland
69.4
35 Kyoto University Japan
69.0
36 University of York United Kingdom
68.7
37 Pohang University of Science and Technology Republic of Korea
68.1
38 University of Queensland Australia Australia
67.6
39 Australian National University Australia
66.9
39 University of Adelaide Australia
66.9
39 University of Dundee United Kingdom
66.9
42 Monash University Australia
66.6
43 University of California, Santa Barbara United States
66.5
44 University of Barcelona Spain
65.4
45 University of Cape Town South Africa
65.2
46 École Normale Supérieure France
64.7
47 King's College London United Kingdom
64.6
48 Vanderbilt University United States
64.4
49 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Germany
64.0
50 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong
63.9

Vibrant MIT leads parade of global stars

30 September 2010

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology heads our life sciences ranking — the first half of which is comprised exclusively of institutions from the US, Canada and the UK.

MIT's triumph in this subject area will come as no surprise to those familiar with the institution: about a third of its on-campus research is in the area of life sciences and is supported by the US federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Although the top half of the life sciences table has only three countries represented, the bottom half offers a more varied geographical spread, with five institutions from Asia, five from Australia and five from continental Europe.

The highest-ranked institution outside the US, Canada or the UK is the Karolinska Institute of Sweden in 28th position, which celebrates its bicentennial this year. The institute and its partner hospital, the Karolinska University Hospital, together account for 30 per cent of the country's medical training.