The Times Higher Education (THE) in the UK announced the list of Young University Rankings 2020 local time in UK on June 24. The rankings list the world’s best universities that are 50 years old or younger. The Young University Rankings 2020 includes 414 universities across 66 territories. In particular, Mainland China has 6 universities on the list, while Hong Kong and Macao jointly have another 6. This has been the first time that Macau University of Science and Technology participated in the rankings, and it was ranked 38th, which is the 4th highest across the two straits, Hong Kong and Macao.
Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2020
Founded in 2000, Macau University of Science and Technology (M.U.S.T.) has been implementing the educational approach of “Attaching equal importance to teaching and research”. It has been growing fast and has become the largest-scale comprehensive university in Macao. In recent years, M.U.S.T. has seized tight to “quality” and “innovation”, and devoted continuously to the development of high-quality education and extraordinary research. The good yield in the Young University Rankings 2020 by THE testifies to the international recognition to the University’s strengths.
Macau University of Science and Technology (M.U.S.T.)
In the meantime, the teaching and research strengths M.U.S.T. has been accumulating over the years are now beginning to transform into contributions to Macao and the nation. Since the beginning of this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a giant impact on the mainland and Macao societies and posed a major threat to peoples’ life and security. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, to combat the virus, M.U.S.T. adopted the working strategy of synchronizing research, development and project application, had already commenced and completed a large amount of work in the relevant field such as diagnosis and drug selection related to COVID-19, before the Macao S.A.R. Government launched the special anti-COVID 19 research grants. As such, when the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund unveiled the first approved research projects purposed toward solving key science and technology problems related to COVID-19 to be sponsored by the Macao S.A.R. Government. Of the total 26 projects, 15 belonged to M.U.S.T., making the University the local university with the most approved projects in the bid as well as the main battleground of Macao in combatting the key science and technology problems related to COVID-19. The approved projects cover a wide range of research areas related to COVID-19 with respect to its prevention, pathological mechanisms, precision diagnosis, new drug research and development, and rehabilitation and therapies. This February, Chair Prof. Liu Liang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, President of M.U.S.T. and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, collaborated with Prof. Yao Xiaojun and discovered several active Chinese Medicine pharmaceutical ingredients that proved to be effective in suppressing the novel coronavirus significantly, which could prevent the viruses from reproduction. The “Artificial Intelligence (AI) System for Screening, Diagnosis and Prediction of COVID-19 Pneumonia”, designed and invented by Prof. Zhang Kang of the Faculty of Medicine in March, are gradually being physicalized and implemented in frontline hospitals. What’s more, M.U.S.T. has had several research papers related to COVID-19 being published in the world’s famous journals such as Nature Medicine and Cell.
The Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2020 is based on the same 13 performance indicators as the World University Rankings, but the weightings have been adjusted to give less weight to reputation so as to reflect more favorably on young universities’ missions. The main areas being judged and their respective weights are teaching (learning environment) with 30%, research (volume, income and reputation) with 30%, citations (research influence) with 30%, international outlook (staff, students and research) with 7.5%, and industry income (knowledge transfer) with 2.5%. For more details on the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings, please visit the following website:
