Bright minds behind Münster research success

Münster University's Department of Chemistry comes out second-best in a survey of over 50 German universities. This outstanding result in the latest research rankings drawn up by the National University of Taiwan is evidence of Münster's particular strength in research in this field. It shares its second place with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Only the Technical University of Munich scored better.

For the "Performance Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities 2014", to give it its proper title, scientific publications were evaluated in 14 different fields of research at 903 leading research universities worldwide. In the overall ranking for these universities – in other words, across all categories – Münster is in 159th position, with Chemistry even better at 54th. This means that, from an international point of view, Münster's Department of Chemistry has also achieved an outstanding position. The Top 500 contains a total of 43 German universities, with Münster in 13th place.

"We're delighted and are proud to have so many internationally renowned scientists in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy," says the Dean of the University, Prof. Andreas Heuer. Just recently, in the summer, two of Münster's chemists – Prof. Frank Glorius and Prof. Martin Winter – were included in the list of the world's most-cited scientists, published by the US media group Thomson Reuters. It was not just by chance, for example, that a Helmholtz Institute was set up in Münster: the decisive factor here was the MEET Centre, a leader in battery research, which is closely associated with the Department. There are more successes the Department can look to – for example, the German-Japanese International Research Training Group (IRTG) Münster-Nagoya, as well as the German-Canadian ITRG Münster-Toronto.