Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) maintains its position at Top 150 in the 2022 Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QSWUR) by subject. The 2022 QSWUR by Subject report has revealed that UTB’s Petroleum Engineering subject remained at Top 101-150 and is currently in the 44th place in Asia, 10th place in Southeast Asia and maintains its position as the leading university in the Sultanate for Petroleum Engineering.
According to the report, to produce this ranking, over 14.7 million unique papers, producing close to 96 million citations were analysed. UTB was evaluated against 1,543 other institutions around the world across 51 subjects in five broad subject areas, creating over 17,700 ranked entries altogether. These figures reflect some of the scale behind the huge undertakings carried out to produce these subject rankings.
The achievement has placed UTB in the 10th place in Southeast Asia alongside National University of Singapore (NUS); Malaysia’s Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and UCSI University in Malaysia; Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB); Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL); and Viet Nam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM) in Vietnam.
Other prestigious universities also ranked at the Top 150 include Coventry University, Royal Holloway University of London, and University of Bradford in the United Kingdom; Edith Cowan University in Australia; and Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University, and Missouri University of Science and Technology, in the United States (US) among others.
Programme leader of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering in UTB’s Faculty of Engineering Dr Mohammad Hazwan bin Azri credited the university’s outstanding performance as a result of the institution’s strong partnership, in addition to its research with major oil and gas companies in Brunei.
Therefore, the Petroleum Engineering programme at UTB maintains its face value with other global universities. He also attributed the faculty’s success to its highly qualified and capable staff members, as well as academics who are highly competent experts within their respective fields.
“Their broad knowledge helps propel our academic and research capacity towards a world-class standard. In addition to that, we have highly competent support staff and an encouraging management team within UTB which makes it much easier to achieve these global standards,” Dr Mohammad Hazwan said.
Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Professor Ir Dr Ramesh Singh reiterated that the engineering education provided at UTB is well poised to prepare graduates to solve complex engineering problems.
“We work closely with the industry as part of our continuous quality improvement efforts in our programmes and to ensure the fulfilment of the graduate attributes and professional competencies prescribed by the Washington Accord of the International Engineering Alliance (IEA),” he said.
The 2022 QSWUR by Subject were established through a variable approach in which the weightage of different subjects was ascertained by four metric factors, namely the university’s academic reputation survey, employer reputation, citations per paper published over the last five years, as well as the H-index, which measures both the productivity and citation impact of academic publications. Based from the report, UTB ranked highest in its citations and has improved its scores in other measured indicators from its last year’s performance.
UTB Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Hajah Zohrah binti Haji Sulaiman expressed her pride in the university’s achievement, saying, “Alhamdulillah, thanks to the inspiring leadership of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah ibni Al-Marhum Sultan Haji Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Sa’adul Khairi Waddien, Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam and the Chancellor of UTB, and the continuous support from His Majesty’s Government, as well as the hard work of everyone at the university, particularly the Faculty of Engineering for the commendable achievement.
“Although the Petroleum Engineering programme at UTB is relatively young, this achievement is a testament, amongst others, on how academia views our expertise in Petroleum Engineering.”
With the continuous rise in global rankings among higher education institutions, and an increasingly well-respected reputation, UTB resumes its pursuit of academic excellence to prosper in the same league as other prestigious universities worldwide. UTB is currently rated 5-plus star by QS, and now stands at the 344th position in the QSWUR 2022.
In the QS Top 50 under 50 Young University Rankings category, UTB achieved the 40th place, whereas in the Asian University Rankings, UTB was ranked at number 126.
