Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Overview

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is a public research university in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded in 1970 but its roots can be traced back to 1834 following the establishment of the Free University of Brussels. With campuses across multiple locations and a pluralistic learning environment, VUB is regarded as the most diverse student body among all Flemish universities.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Key Statistics

VUB’s academic structure is organized into eight faculties These include the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, the Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy, the Faculty of Sciences and Bioengineering Sciences, and the Faculty of Law and Criminology. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in business, psychology, philosophy, and engineering.

It has a student population of nearly 20,000. The university also employs over 3,000 administrative staff members across its four campuses. These campuses include the Brussels Health Campus in Jette, the Brussels Humanities, Science and Engineering Campus in Elsene, and the Brussels Technology Campus in Anderlecht.

Other Vrije Universiteit Brussel key statistics are its academic and administrative facilities that include a modern sports center, several auditoriums, a university hospital, student accommodation, and extensive laboratory facilities. VUB also has a comprehensive library system with special collections of journals, books, newspapers, and online databases.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel Research

VUB is one of the most research-intensive Flemish universities worldwide. Some of its funding sources include the Eutopia Young Leaders Academy, the European Research Council, and the ERA-Learn Programme.

The university has conducted in-depth research work in numerous fields but it is recognized for its contributions in physics, particle physics, and the Large Hadron Collider. Vrije Universiteit Brussel researchers have presented their outputs to a worldwide audience by joining international conferences and symposiums such as WebSci: Web Science, ISSCC: International Solid-State Circuits Conference, and FPL: Field-Programmable Logic and Applications.

Its most cited research publication is Kaufman and Rousseeuw’s (1990) “Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis,” which has 20,845 citations to date. VUB’s second most popular research work is Chatrchyan et al.’s (2012) “Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC,” which was published in Physics Letters B and cited 18,703 times.

Moreover, its third most cited research output is Chatrchyan et al.’s (2008) “The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC.” This article which talks about the compact muon solenoid detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was published in the Journal of Instrumentation and cited 9,638 times by students and research professionals worldwide.

In addition, it also has several Vrije Universiteit Brussel research units. These are the Advanced Rehabilitation Technology and Science Research Group, the Brussels Institute for Journalism Studies, the Brussels Research Center for Innovation in Learning and Diversity, and the Brussels Interdisciplinary Institute for Migrations and Minority.

Its other research facilities are the Mobility and Vehicle Technology Research Group, the Research Center Archival and Contemporary Document Management, the Research Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, and the Gender and Diversity Research Center.