The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is ranked 10th in the world in engineering, technology and computer science programs in the 2010 Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings of the world’s top 500 universities. USC computer science is ranked seventh.

Contrary to other rankings, these rankings are based on objective indicators such as the number of highly cited researchers, the number of articles published in the top journals, research funding and prestigious awards.

Dean Yannis C. Yortsos

The top 15 engineering schools were all from the U.S. and five of them - Stanford (2), UC-Berkeley (3), USC Viterbi (10), UC-San Diego (10) and UC-Santa Barbara (15) - were from California.

"Obviously, we have a tremendous strength in engineering in California," observed Dean Yannis C.Yortsos.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University began ranking universities in 2003 in as an effort to objectively measure the gap between Chinese institutions and those in the rest of the world, focusing on academic and research performance. The highest ranking engineering institution in China was Tsinghua University, which was ranked 45th.

Yortsos noted that the Viterbi School has agreements with both Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University for research collaborations and student exchanges.