An aerial view of the DGIST campus. [DGIST]
An aerial view of the DGIST campus. [DGIST]

The Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology announced Saturday that it ranked first in South Korea for the second consecutive year in the citations-per-faculty category of the 2027 QS World University Rankings, published by British higher education analytics firm Quacquarelli Symonds.

The QS World University Rankings are released annually and assess institutions across nine indicators — including academic and employer reputation, student-to-faculty ratio, citations per faculty, internationalization and sustainability — serving as a key benchmark for gauging the competitiveness of higher education institutions worldwide.

The citations-per-faculty metric measures how frequently papers published by a university's researchers are cited by scholars around the world.

DGIST recorded 409.5 citations per faculty member over a five-year period, more than six times the global average of 59.9, and earned a perfect score of 100 in the category for the second year in a row.

Only 11 universities worldwide have achieved a perfect score in this metric for two consecutive years, a group that includes Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology.

Among science and technology-focused universities in South Korea, DGIST is the only institution to have recorded a perfect score two years running.

"This achievement is the result of every member of DGIST dedicating themselves wholeheartedly to research and innovation," said DGIST President Lee Geon-woo. "Building on our globally recognized research competitiveness, we will further strengthen DGIST's differentiated convergence research and advance toward becoming a world-leading research university that shapes the AI era."


kbj7653@heraldcorp.com