Find your university in the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2026

US institutions continue to dominate the top of the annual 51�Թ� Interdisciplinary Science Rankings. But analysis shows that the country loses ground to its rivals when a broader range of subjects are included, while experts fear recent federal funding cuts might result in future interdisciplinary research projects being deemed too risky.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) claims the top spot for the��second year in a row, and is again followed by Stanford University in second place, then California Institute of Technology and newly-ranked University of California, Berkeley in an all-American top four.

They are joined by Duke University (sixth), Georgia Institute of Technology (another newcomer in seventh) and Purdue University West Lafayette (10th) in the top 10. In total, US institutions occupy 18 of the top 50 places and 24 of the top 100.

Making up the rest of the top 10 are Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (fifth), the National University of Singapore (eighth) and the Netherlands’ Wageningen University & Research (ninth). The Dutch institution also receives the top score in the outputs pillar – one of three pillars underpinning the methodology – which measures the number and share of interdisciplinary science research publications, the citations of interdisciplinary science research and the reputation of support for interdisciplinary teams.

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But these are the only Singaporean or Dutch institutions in the top 100. The countries with the highest representation in this group, apart from the US, are Saudi Arabia, Turkey and India, which have six places each in the top 100. With 88 institutions ranked overall, India is also the most represented country in the full ranking.

Top 10 universities for interdisciplinarity 2026��

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The Interdisciplinary Science Rankings – a project in association with Schmidt Science Fellows – was created to improve scientific excellence and collaboration between universities and aims to help institutions benchmark their interdisciplinary scientific work.

Like last year, the ranking, which includes 911 universities from 94 countries or territories, uses 11 metrics to measure university performance in three areas: inputs (funding); process (measures of success, facilities, administrative support and promotion); and outputs (publications, research quality and reputation).

However, this year, in response to university engagement and feedback, the interdisciplinary scope has been broadened to cover any research project that comprises multiple scientific disciplines, or one or more scientific disciplines combined with one or more of the following non-STEM disciplines: social sciences, education, psychology, law, economics, or medical and health.

Alongside the ranking, THE and Schmidt Science Fellows have published a White Paper analysing insights from the data and participating institutions.��

The US’ strong overall performance is driven by its high scores in the outputs category, which is worth two-thirds of the overall score, with 13 of the country’s institutions ranking in the top 20 for this pillar. It performs particularly well on the metric measuring prestige for interdisciplinary research, which is based on the results of a survey of active researchers. The respondents were asked to name up to five institutions that are the best globally in terms of interdisciplinary science research.��

But the US fares less well in the other two pillars. Just six US institutions rank in the top 20 for the process pillar, and only MIT features in the top 20 for inputs. The US’ average inputs score of 43 out of 100 is on a par with regional averages in Asia and Europe.

US institutions also appear to lose strength now that the rankings measure interdisciplinarity across a broader range of subjects, with its average rank dropping from 165 to 229 (when only examining institutions ranked in both years). The same trend can also be observed for universities in Western Europe, while countries in Eastern Europe appear to benefit from the new inclusion of non-STEM subjects.

The US’ average score for its proportion of interdisciplinary science research has dropped by a significant 13 per cent following the methodology change. Sam Armenta Butt,��senior data scientist at THE, said that while the inclusion of non-STEM subjects had expanded the overall number of research publications in the US, the number of publications considered as interdisciplinary had not risen by the same extent.

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Meanwhile, the country’s average score for the metric measuring how interdisciplinary a publication’s citations are has also decreased, by 4 per cent.

“This all indicates that while the US has strong interdisciplinary science bibliometrics when looking within science subjects, when broadening the field, their strength slightly decreases,” Armenta Butt suggested.

The US also suffers a fall in its average score for the metric relating to tenure or promotion systems in place that recognise interdisciplinary research.

David Romero, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, said that collaborations between more distant fields, such as the social sciences and the natural sciences or engineering, tended to face more structural and cultural barriers.

“Funding mechanisms, departmental structures and evaluation systems are still organised around traditional disciplines, which makes these broader collaborations harder to sustain.”

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Yi Bu, an assistant professor in data science at Peking University, said the revised methodology would reward institutions that have formal mechanisms to bridge the boundaries between STEM and the social sciences and humanities (SSH).

“Places with explicit STEM-SSH integration policies, incentives and reporting, not just strong STEM, gain ground, which helps explain the slight relative softening for the US and parts of Western Europe,” he said.

Countries best represented in the top 200 of the Interdisciplinary Science Rankings 2026

US institutions have been impacted by a series of federal funding reductions this year, which might also create planning risks for future multi-year interdisciplinary projects, the experts suggested.

Bu warned that the cuts would cause “real headwinds” but that their impact on the very top performers was likely to be “lagged and heterogeneous”.

“Institutions like MIT diversify [their funding sources] with industry partnerships and institute-level seed funds that explicitly underwrite interdisciplinary work, partially buffering federal volatility. [But] if sustained, sizeable federal cuts would still erode breadth and inclusivity, because large federal programmes are uniquely scaled for convergence research,” he said.

When research funding becomes more constrained, researchers and institutions often become more cautious, focusing on projects with a higher chance of success within a single discipline, added Michigan’s Romero.

“Top institutions like MIT may be somewhat insulated because of their strong industry partnerships and private funding, but reduced federal support could make it harder to sustain the cross-disciplinary initiatives that often drive major scientific breakthroughs.”

While the US has more spots in the top 100 than any other country, Asian universities (49) have far more than North America (26) when looking at continent-wide figures.

Hong Kong receives the highest average overall score (71 out of 100) among all territories in the ranking that have at least five ranked universities. This is ahead of Australia (62) and the US (60).

City University of Hong Kong, which climbs to 11th��place overall, up from 25th��last year, has the joint highest score of all institutions for inputs (98 out of 100), alongside King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. Both institutions have internal funding structures that apportion significant resources into interdisciplinary research projects.

Bu said that Hong Kong, like Singapore, had built shared research platforms and competitive schemes that catalyse cross-department, cross-university collaboration.

“These systems couple targeted public investment with formal processes and facilities that make interdisciplinary work the default, so they convert resources into measurable outputs in exactly the dimensions that the interdisciplinary science captures,” he said.

Romero added that several Asian countries have made significant investments in their research infrastructure and talent across STEM and social sciences subjects.

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“Success at interdisciplinarity also depends on institutional design, joint appointments, cross-departmental research centres…which are features Asian universities seem to be investing in,” he said.

patrick.jack@timeshighereducation.com