The UK Times Higher Education (THE) report published the ranking list of the 2022 best universities in the world, and 11 universities of Taiwan enter the Top 1000, revealing the fact that both China Medical University (CMU) and Asia University (AU) enter the list. Accordingly, the CMU is ranked No. 318 in the world, No. 4 in Taiwan, No. 2 in the private universities in the country, while AU is ranked No. 586 in the world, No. 6 in Taiwan, No. 3 in the private universities in the country, and No. 1 in the non-medical private universities. Moving up by 219 places in the list this year, AU is the university with the greatest improvement and the youngest in Taiwan.

The UK THE report pointed out that the outbreak of the COVID-19 last year caused the higher education sector to invest in related research, making many universities to rise in the ranking this year, such as Capital Medical University in China (ranked 501 to 600), AU in Taiwan (ranked 501 to 600), Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia (ranked 601 to 800), and Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia (ranked 601 to 800), which have all increased by “one ranking band” (including 100 places), when compared with the last year.

President of AU, Prof. Jeffrey J. P. Tsai, said that AU is not a medical university, but it has an affiliated hospital to promote the devlopedment of the related departments such as the College of Medical and Health Science and the College of Nursing at AU. “Furthermore, AU combines AI and 5G research fields of the College of Information and Electrical Engineering to promote smart medical and smart care; and all the colleges of the school is engaged in AI cross-domain teaching and related activities to enhance the research energy,” said President Tsai.

President Tsai also said that AU has made outstanding progress in the citation rates of papers and international reputation this year, and that three years ago, AU established an AI college that has undergraduate, master, and doctoral programs of AI, and cooperated with Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Taiwan AI Academy, Nvidia, etc. to cultivate AI talents and apply cross-field AI in big data, Internet of Things (IoT), and financial blockchains to enhance research energy. “Furthermore, the teachers of AU publish SCI- or SSCI-level papers, and not only the quality but also the number has improved year by year,” mentioned President Tsai in addition.

Prof. Mei-Chin Yin, Director of Research and Development at AU, pointed out that this year, in the THE report published by the ranking of the best world universities, 1,662 universities from 99 countries around the world were selected, and the total number reached a record high. Director Yin emphasized furthermore that Taiwan has 40 universities in the ranking, and 11 universities appear in the Top 1000 and that the list no longer includes rankings after No. 1200.

Director Yin also mentioned that AU has continued to grow in five of the THE indicators, including teaching, research, paper citation rate, corporate cooperation income, and international reputation this year; among them, the citation rates of papers increased by 83% and international reputation indicator value increased by 24%. These two improvements are the most significant. “Furthermore, the 2021 Academic Ranking List published by Shanghai Jiaotong University in the last month shows that AU and CMU also entered the list; and it is obvious that the two universities can meet the standards in different rankings, obtain good results, and are recognized internationally,” pointed out Director Yin.