The Australian National University

The Australian National University (ANU) is a national research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and institutes.

Founded in 1946, it is the only university to have been created by the Parliament of Australia. Originally a postgraduate research university, ANU commenced undergraduate teaching in 1960 when it integrated the Canberra University College, which had been established in 1929 as a campus of the University of Melbourne. ANU enrolls 10,052 undergraduate and 10,840 postgraduate students and employs 3,753 staff. The university's endowment stood at $1.13 billion in 2012.

ANU is regarded as one of the world's leading research universities. It is ranked 1st in Australia and the whole of Oceania, 24th in the world by the 2019 QS World University Rankings, and 49th in the world (second in Australia) by the 2019 Times Higher Education. ANU was named the world's 7th (first in Australia) most international university in a 2017 study by Times Higher Education. In the 2017 Times Higher Education Global Employability University Ranking, an annual ranking of university graduates' employability, ANU was ranked 21st in the world (first in Australia). The university is particularly well known for its programmes in the arts and social sciences, and ranks among the best in the world for a number of disciplines including politics and international relations, social policy, and geography.

ANU counts six Nobel laureates and 49 Rhodes scholars among its faculty and alumni. The university has educated two prime ministers, 30 current Australian ambassadors and more than a dozen current heads of government departments of Australia. The latest releases of ANU's scholarly publications are held through ANU Press online.

Campus

Acton, Canberra

The main campus of ANU extends across the Canberra suburb of Acton, which consists of 358 acres (1.45 km2) of mostly parkland with university buildings landscaped within. ANU is roughly bisected by Sullivans Creek, part of the Murray–Darling basin, and is bordered by the native bushland of Black Mountain, Lake Burley Griffin, the suburb of Turner and the Canberra central business district. Many university sites are of historical significance dating from the establishment of the national capital, with over 40 buildings recognised by the Commonwealth Heritage List and several others on local lists.

With over 10,000 trees on its campus, ANU won an International Sustainable Campus Network Award in 2009 and was ranked the 2nd greenest university campus in Australia in 2011.

Four of Australia's five learned societies are based at ANU—the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law. The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science and the National Film and Sound Archive are also located at ANU, while the National Museum of Australia and CSIRO are situated next to the campus.

ANU occupies additional locations including Mount Stromlo Observatory on the outskirts of Canberra, Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, a campus at Kioloa on the South Coast of New South Wales and a research unit in Darwin.

Colleges

Arts and Social Sciences

The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences is divided into the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) and the Research School of Humanities and the Arts (RSHA). Within RSSS there are schools dedicated to history, philosophy, sociology, political science and international relations, Middle Eastern studies and Latin American studies. RSHA contains schools focusing on anthropology, archaeology, classics, art history, English literature, drama, film studies, gender studies, linguistics, European languages as well as an art and music school. In 2017, ANU ranked 6th in the world for politics, 8th in the world for Social Policy and Administration and 11th in the world for development studies. It is also home to the Australian Studies Institute, the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research and the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods.

Asia and the Pacific

The ANU College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) is a specialist centre of Asian and Pacific studies and languages, among the largest collections of experts in these fields of any university in the English-speaking world. The College is home to three academic schools: the Crawford School of Public Policy, a research intensive public policy school; the School of Culture, History and Language, the nation's centre dedicated to investigating and learning with and about the people, languages, and lands of Asia and the Pacific; and Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australia's foremost collection of expertise in the politics and international affairs of Asia and the Pacific.

The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre is also a component of the College. Peter Drysdale is known for laying the intellectual foundation of APEC at CAP. The College also houses the Australian Centre on China in the World, the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), Australia. It also has dedicated regional institutes for China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, the Pacific, Southeast Asia and South Asia. The College hosts a series annual and biannual updates, on various regions in the Asia-Pacific. The Crawford School of Public Policy houses the Asia Pacific Arndt-Cohen Department of Economics, the Asia Pacific Network for Environmental Governance (APNEG), the Australia-Japan Research Centre, The Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research, the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, the ANU National Security College and the East Asia Forum publication. The Crawford School of Public Policy also hosts offices and programs for the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). Many high performing Year in Asia program students gain the opportunity to travel to an Asian country of their choosing to study for one year specializing in one Asian language. The College also has affiliation with Indiana University's Pan Asia Institute.

Business and Economics

The ANU College of Business and Economics comprises four Research Schools, which carries research and teaching in economics, finance, accounting, actuarial studies, statistics, marketing and management. Dedicated research centres within these schools include the Social Policy Evaluation, Analysis and Research Centre, the Australian National Centre for Audit and Assurance Research, the ANU Centre for Economic History, the National Centre for Information Systems Research and the ANU Centre for Economic Policy Research. The college is professionally accredited with the Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia, CPA Australia, the Australian Computer Society, the Actuaries Institute Australia, the Institute of Public Accountants, the Association of International Accountants, the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute and the Statistical Scoiety of Australia Inc. It also has membership of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Engineering and Computer Science

The ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science is divided into two Research Schools, which study a range of engineering and computer science topics respectively. ANU is home to the National Computational Infrastructure National Facility and was a co-founder of NICTA, the chief information and communications technology research centre in Australia. Research groups in ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science include Algorithms and Data, Applied Signal Processing, Artificial Intelligence, Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, Computer Systems, Computer Vision and Robotics, Data-Intensive Computing, Information and Human Centred Computing, Logic & Computation, Materials and Manufacturing, Semiconductor and Solar Cells, Software Intensive Systems Engineering, Solar Thermal Group, Systems and Control. Disciplinary areas include theories, operations and cutting-edge research that will enhance user experience by integrating ever-evolving information technology methods in engineering applications, with the emphasis on energy source.

Law

The ANU College of Law covers legal research and teaching, with centres dedicated to commercial law, international law, public law and environmental law. In addition to numerous research programs, the College offers the professional LL.B. and J.D. degrees. It is the 7th oldest of Australia's 36 law schools and was ranked 2nd among Australian and 12th among world law schools by the 2018 QS Rankings. Students are given the chance to spend three weeks in Geneva concerning the institutional practice of International Law.

Medicine, Biology and Environment

The ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment encompasses the John Curtin School of Medical Research (JCSMR), the ANU Medical School, the Fenner School of Environment & Society and Research Schools of Biology, Psychology and Population Health. JCSMR was established in 1948 as a result of the vision of Nobel laureate Howard Florey. Three further Nobel Prizes have been won as a result of research at JCSMR—in 1963 by John Eccles and in 1996 by Peter Doherty and Rolf M. Zinkernagel.

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

The ANU College of Physical & Mathematical Sciences comprises the Research Schools of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Mathematical Sciences and Physics. Under the direction of Mark Oliphant, nuclear physics was one the university's most notable early research priorities, leading to the construction of a 500 megajoule homopolar generator and a 7.7 megaelectronvolts cyclotron in the 1950s. These devices were to be used as part of a 10.6 gigaelectronvolt synchrotron particle accelerator that was never completed, however they remained in use for other research purposes. ANU has been home to eight particle accelerators over the years and operates the 14UD and LINAS accelerators. Brian Schmidt (astrophysicist at Mount Stromlo Observatory) received the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Rankings

ANU was ranked 24th in the world (first in Australia) by the 2019 QS World University Rankings, and 49th in the world (second in Australia) by the 2019 Times Higher Education. ANU was named the world's seventh (first in Australia) most international university in a 2017 study by Times Higher Education. In the 2015 Times Higher Education Global Employability University Ranking, an annual ranking of university graduates' employability, ANU was ranked 32nd in the world (first in Australia). ANU was ranked 100th in the world (first in Australia) in the CWTS Leiden ranking.

In the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017, ANU was ranked sixth in the world for politics, eighth in the world for social policy and administration, tenth in the world for arts and humanities, thirteenth in the world for archaeology and fourteenth in the world for history.