CSC News

How NC State's Department of Computer Science Ranks Among the Best: By the Numbers

Rankings from CSRankings, a metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions around the world, consistently place NC State’s Department of Computer Science as a leader among US institutions. From 2014 to 2024, the department ranked #36 in overall publications and had notably high rankings in several disciplines, including: high-performance computing (1), software engineering (3), computer science education (5), embedded and real-time systems (7), computer architecture (9) and computational biology and bioinformatics (19).

“The fact that CS ranks high in so many sub fields of Computer Science on CSRankings.org illustrates the strength of our faculty and their research across those subfields, and highlights the department’s cutting-edge research, broad impacts and innovation,” said department head Gregg Rothermel. “This helps make the department an attractive choice for both students and researchers.”

CSRankings evaluates institutions not based on subjective values like name recognition, but via quantitive data. The site aims for a ranking system that is both meaningful and transparent. Thus, rankings are determined based on the number of publications by faculty that have appeared at the most selective conferences in each area of computer science. The lists of conferences were developed in consultation with faculty across a range of institutions.

Notably, the department has shown growth in recent years in the emerging field of artificial intelligence. While the department ranked 32 from 2014-2024 in AI, in 2024, CS’s ranking rose to 9. This rise in the rankings reflects our faculty’s focus on emerging issues within the computer science field. As this field continues to grow, a particular focus of the department is to go beyond core AI (machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, etc.) to applied artificial intelligence. Applied AI is the practical application of artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems. Think and Do, anyone?

Xipeng Shen, professor of computer science, joined the department as part of the Chancellor's Faculty Excellence Program in 2014. In the past decade, Shen has been one of CS’s most prolific researchers, with 42 of his published papers being counted in CSRankings.

“Unlike other rankings that may rely on reputation survey, CSRankings focuses on publications in top-tier conferences, making it a transparent and data-driven tool for evaluating research impact,” said Shen. “For our department, CSRankings is particularly valuable in attracting top students and faculty. Many prospective students look to objective measures when choosing a program, and a strong showing in CSRankings signals the strength of our research output. It helps showcase our faculty’s contributions to leading conferences and reinforces our reputation as a research powerhouse.”

~brown~