The School of Civil Engineering of NTUA (National Technical University of Athens) up to the glaciers of the Alps! • 11 days • 130 fourth-year students • 20 technical subjects • 2400 km • 14 cities and villages • 48 sponsors! For another year, the Geotechnical Division of the School of Civil Engineering organized the great field trip of Engineering Geology, which has been training students and young engineers around Europe for the past 30 years.

With this field trip, our team visited failures of major civil engineering projects and discussed technical issues in Greece, Italy, and France, which play a crucial role in the education and development of students as real engineers. These issues were analyzed in depth, making the large—and real—scale of the projects apparent, which is as significant as the responsibility that future engineers will bear.

This year, the sponsorship support from companies within and outside our technical field surpassed all previous years, setting a new record! This year, 48 companies contributed, covering over 70% of the total cost of the excursion, thus supporting the massive participation of 130 students!

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our 48 sponsors for their significant support in the educational process.

And of course, we thank our institution, the National Technical University of Athens, and especially our School, for the opportunity to print the excursion booklets, a valuable resource for the students' library.

The excursion was completed with absolute success and with experiences that will remain indelible in the students' memories! A hallmark of this year's excursion was the smiles, the impressed looks at each stop, and the large group hugs, despite the difficulties of the program.

Responsible for this success was Assistant Professor of the School of Civil Engineering Vasilis Marinos, in collaboration with a student committee, the PhD Student Themis Chatzitheodosiou, and the good spirits and interest of the students throughout the excursion.

In the recently published study annually conducted by researchers at Stanford University (USA), which lists the 2% of researchers with the greatest scientific influence worldwide, 130 researchers of the National Technical University of Athens are included, 128 of them are serving or retired members of the Teaching and Research Staff and 2 are members of the Special Staff & Teaching and Research Associates of NTUA.

An analysis by Professor I. Ioannidis of the Stanford University for the Greek scientists contained in this database, shows that there are 78 active members, which corresponds to 20% of its faculty members. The study retrieved data from the SCOPUS database, the world's largest database of scientific publications.

From the School of Civil Engineering, 21 professors are among the top researchers in the world. Specifically, for the year 2022, 13 professors are contained in the list (in order of their ranks), the top 5 of them are among the top 10 NTUA researchers:

G. Gazetas, D. Koutsoyiannis, D. Vamvatsikos, E. Vlahogianni, M. Karlaftis†, N. Lagaros, M. Papadrakakis, G. Yannis, C. Plati, I. Psycharis*, Ι. Golias, N. Gerolymos, E. Baltas

A second list referring to all years analysed (1996-2022) contains 18, i.e. 10 of the above and in addition:

D. Dermatas, J. Katsikadelis, M. Kotsovos, E. Sapountzakis, D. Tsamboulas†, C. Gantes, K. Spyrakos, E. Vintzilaiou

(Retired/emeritus professors are marked with * and deceased with †).

Attached files

• Sublist with the Greeks (file: RanksGRC-2022.xlsx): Contains part of the database and specifically the scientists who serve in Greek Institutions (with a filter for the scientists of NTUA -- by removing it the entire list is displayed).
• Explanation of abbreviations (file: Abbreviations2022.xlsx)

Related links

• Database: List with the 100 000+ top scientists (In excel format, files Table_1_Authors_career_2022.xlsx and Table_1_Authors_singleyr_2022.xlsx)
• Article in PLOS Biology (file: PlosBiology-IoannidisArticle2.pdf)
• Article by I. Ioannidis (file: PlosBiology-IoannidisArticle3.pdf)

Republished from the main website of NTUA

In the Shanghai Ranking of 2021, the NTUA scored major distinctions, most prominently in the subject of Civil Engineering. Specifically, the NTUA is ranked in this subject 4th in the world and 2nd in Europe.

It is noted that in the field of Civil Engineering, the NTUA has always been high in the international rankings, ranked 7th in the Shanghai Ranking for the previous three years and was in the top 50 for many years in the QS ranking. But it is the first time it appears in the world's top five.

The Rector of the NTUA, Prof. Andreas Boudouvis, says: "This is an important achievement of the NTUA and a global promotion of the country, since for the first time in the history of worldwide assessments and rankings of universities, a university from Greece ranks in the top five. The NTUA aspires and has the potential to reach very high. With a commitment to extroversion, with hard work and persistent effort to tackle hardship and regression, with our pursuit of excellence and its recognition, and with an agenda of dynamic presence at the cutting edge of international scientific developments, the creative forces of the NTUA will achieve exceptional goals."

The Dean of the School of Civil Engineering, Prof. Nikos Lagaros, notes: "We are thrilled by this result, which gives us courage to continue our efforts for high quality teaching and research, and for meritocracy in a context of democratic function and transparency. And it comes at a time when we need an international moral reward, since our country not only does not reward us, but the measures it has taken over the last decade have hurt the School of Civil Engineering more than any other. Our teaching staff has been halved and our budget has been cut to one tenth!".

The 2021 Shanghai Ranking contains rankings of universities in 54 subjects across Natural Sciences, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences. More than 1800 out of 4000 universities across 93 countries and regions are finally listed in the rankings. To quantify the performance of universities around the world, Shanghai Ranking used five academic indicators, namely those of research output (Q1), research influence (CNCI), international collaboration (IC), research quality (TOP), and international academic awards (AWARD).

Eleven Greek Universities are included in the ranking, as shown in the first table, with the NTUA holding the lead.

In addition to the subject of Civil Engineering, the NTUA appears in 14 other subjects, as shown in the second table, which includes a comparison with four other Greek universities that deal with corresponding areas.

The four best rankings, after that in the field of Civil Engineering, are marine technology, water resources, transport technology, and automation and control. These subjects are interdepartmental, but it is characteristic that the two of them (Water Resources, Transportation Science & Technology) are primarily dealt with in the School of Civil Engineering, which participates in another of the four (Marine/Ocean Engineering, primarily served by the School of Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering).

It is also interesting that the NTUA is also distinguished in subjects which do not belong to the main body of its scientific areas, such as atmospheric and economic science.

Notably, the NTUA does not appear in a similar rank when assessed as a whole, without reference to a particular subject. The reason is that it is a small university with selected (technological) coverage of the whole area of sciences and with only 9 Departments (Mono-departmental Schools). On the contrary, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Athens have multiple departments and subjects each. It is therefore expected that the NTUA would rank below these two, when each is assessed as a whole, and this also happens in the Shanghai Ranking. NTUA’s strength and quality are highlighted when examined by subject, as shown in the above data.

Nevertheless, in other rankings it is found to be the first university in the country, as in the very recent QS ranking for the year 2022. Not only is the NTUA ranked first in Greece, but it is also the only Greek university in the top 500 in the world, as shown in the picture below.