Stony Brook Ranked in Top 40 Globally for Physics by U.S. News & World Report

Stony Brook University posted its highest-ever ranking in the 2025-26 U.S News & World Report Best Global Universitites for Physics, with a global ranking of 39 and a national ranking of 19.

It marks the first time that Stony Brook has placed within the top 40 globally and the top 20 nationally. Two years ago, Stony Brook ranked 77 and 27, respectively.

"I am exceptionally pleased to see that U.S.News and World Report ranked our department within top 40 globally and top 20 nationally for the first time in history," said Chang Kee Jung, distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "While I truly believe the quality of our department is even higher, I welcome these rankings that reflect our excellent faculty, and graduate and undergrad programs. I am proud to say the Department of Physics and Astronomy is an exceptional department that continues its effort to improve itself and make it a warm, welcoming and fun place with high academic excellence, where everyone wants to come."

The Department of Physics and Astronomy, in the College of Arts and Sciences, collaborates closely with Brookhaven National Lab, the Flatiron Institute and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and hosts the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science and the Center for Accelerator Science and Education. Current and past faculty members have received numerous top honors in the field, including the Nobel Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the National Academy of Science membership, American Association of the Advancement of Science fellowship, American Physical Society fellowship, and more.

The department shares faculty with the CN Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, a leading center for high energy physics, formal/string theory, cosmology, quantum information science, and statistical mechanics; the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, a research center devoted to furthering fundamental knowledge in geometry and theoretical physics, especially knowledge at the interface of these two disciplines; and the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, with an aim to advance biology and medicine through discoveries in physics, mathematics and computational science.