Overview
- Khalifa University moved up 30 places to rank 147 in the QS World University Rankings 2027, becoming the first higher-education institution from the UAE inside the global top 150.
- QS flagged two main drivers of the jump: citations per faculty, where Khalifa is 87th, and international faculty share, where it is 12th.
- The university held its 2026 graduation under royal patronage, awarding 1,066 degrees across bachelor’s (742), master’s (91), doctoral (193) and medical (40) programs.
- Students and faculty are active in applied projects tied to national priorities—maternal and child health, the UAE reference genome, cybersecurity, desalination and AI agriculture—and the university’s tech-transfer arm has supported more than 60 startups.
- The rise builds on sustained subject strengths such as petroleum engineering (ranked sixth globally) and should help Khalifa attract more global talent, partnerships and research funding that feed the UAE’s push toward a knowledge-based economy.