Stony Brook University has achieved its highest placement to date in the 2025-26 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities for Physics, ranking 39th worldwide and 19th nationally. This is the first time the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy has reached the top 40 globally and the top 20 among U.S. institutions. Two years ago, Stony Brook was ranked 77th globally and 27th nationally.
“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 operates within Stony Brook’s College of Arts and Sciences. It works closely with research organizations such as Brookhaven National Laboratory, Flatiron Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. The department also hosts research centers including the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science and the Center for Accelerator Science and Education.
Faculty members have received recognition through major awards such as Nobel Prizes, Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics, memberships in national academies, fellowships from leading scientific associations, among others.
The department collaborates with several interdisciplinary institutes: it shares faculty with the CN Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics—an institution focused on high energy physics, cosmology, quantum information science, formal/string theory, statistical mechanics—and works with centers like the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics as well as the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology.