The School of Business and Economics has cemented its position as a world-leading institution in Library & Information Management ranked 10^th in the QS World University Rankings.

The QS World University Rankings rank the world’s top universities in individual subject areas. The rankings aim to help prospective students identify the world’s leading schools in their chosen field in response to high demand for subject-level comparisons. Universities are rated based on their academic and employer reputations and the impact and productivity of their research.

Head of the School of Business & Economics Information Management Discipline Group, Crispin Coombs commented:

“There is some really exciting research taking place in the Information Management Group ranging from analysing US public emotion on twitter to predict the US general election result, to the use of new technologies for aerospace manufacturers to move to environmentally friendly circular economy practices”.

• The EMOTIVE system, developed by Professor Tom Jackson, Dr Suzanne Elayan and Dr Martin Sykora, uses complex software to extract from each tweet a direct expression of one of eight basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, shame and confusion. An overall score of all eight emotions gave an indication of which presidential candidate was in the lead, based on public sentiment. The system was used successfully in the 2016 US election to predict a Trump victory, and has been more accurate in reflecting the close nature of the 2020 election, than the political polls.

• The challenge for aerospace manufacturers is transitioning from a linear economy to a circular economy (CE) to reduce adverse environmental impacts and associated economic costs in the development of new products. The UK has the world’s largest aerospace industry outside the USA, and it is the second largest contributor to the UK economy after pharmaceuticals. The Circular Economy in Aerospace (CEiA) project, led by Dr Crispin Coombs, investigates the use of Industrial Digital Technologies (IDTs) within production environments to transition to circular economy practices and deliver enhanced productivity, connectivity and efficiency.

“Students that choose Loughborough have the benefit of learning directly from research experts that bring ground-breaking new insights, such as these, into the classroom. We are proud to collaborate with leading industry players such as Deloitte, Lloyds Banking Group, Rolls Royce, IBM and SAP and we frequently engage our partners to deliver guest lectures to enrich the teaching experience at Loughborough. Many of our graduates go on to work for these companies further strengthening our long-standing employer relations”.

The School is ranked No.1 in the U.K. for Librarianship & Information Management by the The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2021 and 1st in UK for Graduate Prospects in Librarianship and Information Management Complete University Guide 2021.

You can find out more about our Information Management and Business Technology programme online. We have start dates available in January and September 2021.