According to the prestigious QS World University ranking, the DTU petroleum engineering has been recognized to be the third in the world together with Stanford University. Only National University of Singapore and UT Austin were rated higher. DTU was ranked higher than many other well-known Universities, like Texas AM, Imperial College, University of Adelaide and TU Delft.
The QS World University ranking evaluates the quality of the researchers and the teachers running the corresponding education. The most important criteria are related to their academic reputation, as well as to the reputation of the employer. These ratings are determined based on the answers to the questionnaires collected worldwide. Other, less important parameters in the rank are the H- and citation indices of the publications. While evaluation of the scientific contributions places the DTU petroleum studies within the first twenty, the academic reputation is very high and provides us the third place in the total ranking. Generally, the DTU is ranked 103 among the World Universities.
The DTU research activities within petroleum engineering take place in several Departments, including DTU Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, as well as Departments of Mechanical, Civil, Environmental engineering, DTU Chemistry, and DTU Compute. The Centre for Oil and Gas (DHRTC), in collaboration with other DTU divisions, develops research activities directed towards Danish petroleum resources. Center for Energy Resources Engineering (CERE) is, probably, the oldest Center involved in this kind of research. Since its creation, at that time as IVC-SEP, it has carried out world-leading studies of petroleum reservoir fluids. When CERE was formed, these studies were expanded into a wide range of experimental and modeling studies covering all the areas of modern petroleum engineering.
The Master program in petroleum engineering was established in 2008 by Professor Erling Stenby, at that time the Head of CERE. The core teachers of the Program belong to CERE, to the Departments of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering (as the current Head of studies, Alexander Shapiro); Civil Engineering, DTU Chemistry, and DTU Compute. This is not a large program: the average annual intake over many years is around 20 students.
Unlike the classical five-year petroleum programs, as in many leading universities, the DTU program does not have the corresponding bachelor education. It accepts the Bachelor students from the widely varying directions and aims at educating them in the fundamentals of petroleum engineering and allowing professionalizing in the petroleum industry with their previous educational background. This approach is in good agreement with both the educational strategy of DTU giving a lot of freedom to the Master students to choose their education and to the modern trends in the petroleum industry, which becomes increasingly diversified and utilizes knowledge and skills from other disciplines.
The MSc and PhD graduates educated at the DTU work worldwide, promoting the high academic reputation of the DTU petroleum research and education.
