Expertise

Today Ghent University attracts over 41,000 students, with a foreign student population of about 10% (30% of PhD students). In 2016, the university invested over 297 million Euros in research projects on behalf of public and private partners, and employed around 7,300 academic staff members. Ghent University is ranked 62nd in the Shanghai and 118th in the Times ranking.

The university is one of the fastest growing European universities in terms of research capacity and productivity, and its commitment to European research excellence is reflected by the recent extension of the ‘European Office’ in its Research Office, i.e. the department overseeing, guiding and administering research projects. It hosts 47 ERC grant holders (27 under FP7 and 22 under H2020) and acquired 36 Marie Skłodowska Curie fellowships (26 under FP7 and 12 under H2020). In H2020, it is involved in 28 ITN projects (4 as coordinator).

The university provides excellent training opportunities to both young and experienced researchers, for which it has been rewarded the HR Excellence in Research label by the European Commission. Ghent University awarded 674 PhD degrees in 2016 of which over 30% went to international young researchers and counts 17 highly cited authors (Thomson Reuters) among its academic staff.

As the university is a so-called full comprehensive university, our research activities in automotive are spread over several research departments and research groups, most of them are active within one of the three Ghent University research & valorization clusters. They not only group the expertise of several research groups, they are also stimulating interaction with regional and the European industrial ecosystem a.o. by setting up EU projects.

Participation in EU Projects and International Activities

The University has participated in more than 200 research projects in the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) and in 263 research projects in the Seventh Framework Programme, of which it coordinated 42 collaborative projects. Up till now, Ghent University is under H2020 (the new Framework Programme (2014-2020)) involved in around 150 projects, and coordinates 15 of them.