Rankings
A recent assessment by the National Research Council has placed Penn State's Department of Chemistry among the top chemistry departments in the nation.
Table 1 contains the results of the 2010 NRC survey of chemistry departments; it also compares the H-index of the Penn State Chemistry Department with other selected departments.
| 2010 NRC Composite Index |
Program | H-INDEX* (1988-2008) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
1-4 |
Harvard University Chemical Physics | |
| 2 | 1-5 | California Institute of Technology | |
| 3 | 1-6 | Harvard University Chemistry | 226 |
| 4 | 1-6 | University of California - Berkeley | 195 |
| 5 | 3-9 | Northwestern University | 148 |
| 6 | 4-12 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 120 |
| 7 | 5-13 | Stanford University | 140 |
| 8 | 5-15 | Columbia University | 116 |
| 9 | 5-14 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 191 |
| 10 | 5-14 | Yale University | 142 |
| 11 | 7-19 | University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill | 127 |
| 12 | 8-22 | Pennsylvania State University | 121 |
| 13 | 8-24 | University of California - Los Angeles | 165 |
| 14 | 8-26 | University of California - San Francisco | |
| 15 | 10-29 | Georgia Institute of Technology | |
| 16 | 11-31 | University of California - San Diego | |
| 17 | 11-34 | Princeton University | 120 |
| 18 | 12-37 | University of Texas at Austin | 131 |
| 19 | 11-39 | Rice University | |
| 20 | 14-38 | University of Chicago | 109 |
One additional measure of the excellence of an academic research department is the ability of the faculty members to generate external funds for research support. In a recent report from the National Science Foundation, Academic Research and Development Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2008, Penn State Chemistry placed number eleven in the list of top 100 chemistry departments with the most spending on chemical research and development.
NOTE: The H-index, or Hirsch index, has been proposed as a method for measuring the scientific productivity of a researcher or department. The H-index is defined as the number of papers with citation number greater than or equal to H. (See for example PNAS November 15, 2005 vol. 102 no. 46 16569-16572)
