University of Adelaide in Australia 

The University of Adelaide was founded in 1874 with a noble goal: to prepare, for South Australia, young leaders shaped by education, rather than birth or wealth, in a settlement free of old-world social and religious inequalities.

By every measure, the University of Adelaide—a member of Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight research-intensive universities—stands tall among the world’s leading institutions of learning and innovation.

The clearest indication of this is our consistently high rating by the most respected international assessment bodies: QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education and Shanghai Jiao Tong’s Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU). All consider us one of the top 1% of Universities worldwide, and the top university in our state.

We’re equally proud of the fact that the vast majority of our research is rated ‘above or well above world standard’ by the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research Australia program.

We count among our distinguished alumni: five Nobel Laureates; over 100 Rhodes Scholars, including Australia’s first Indigenous recipient; and Australia’s first female prime minister and Supreme Court judge. Many of our staff and teachers are internationally recognised leaders in their fields. And we attract a diverse student body of over 27,000 from more than 90 countries.

At the University of Adelaide, we’ve made a habit of breaking new ground. We were our state’s first university. The first in Australia to admit women to all our degree courses on an equal basis to men. The first to offer degrees in science and business. And the first to establish a conservatorium of music.

In recent times, that spirit of innovation has only grown stronger. For example:

we were one of only three universities in the world to be involved in each of the following major scientific discoveries: gravitational waves; the Higgs boson elementary particle; and a celestial source of high-energy neutrinos

we’re currently co-leading creation of the world’s first definitive legal text on conflict in space

our photonics and advanced sensing researchers have created the world’s most precise timepiece, known as the Sapphire Clock

In each of the past two years, we’ve had a young researcher recognised in MIT Technology Review’s prestigious Innovators Under 35 list for the Asia Pacific; we were the only Australian university represented in 2020, and in 2019 we were one of just two.

By making history we shape the future. And we’ve only just begun.