Excellence at Ohio State

Ever Wonder?

Ever wonder if someone could make a safe, designer medicine just for our loved ones? Our scientists in drug discovery are on it, working each day to improve and save lives.

Ever wonder what manufacturing in space might mean for manufacturing on Earth? Ohio State’s Starlab project is working to not only answer the question but also apply it to our state’s and nation’s workforce.

Ever wonder what urban transportation without traffic jams looks like? The Transportation Research Center is finding ways to ensure we can spend less time on the highway and more time with our families.

Ever wonder about the speed of an electron? Or how to measure it? We have, and we won a Nobel Prize for it. The discovery has the potential to change the way our many devices and machines operate.

If you’ve wondered about it, chances are we’re on it. We’re applying excellence at scale — to benefit Ohioans, our nation and the world.

Keep wondering — and we will, too.

  • $19.6 billion Impact every year to Ohio’s economy
  • 71% Share of students who hail from the Buckeye State — a reflection of Ohio State’s land-grant mission
  • 116,819 Jobs supported by Ohio State, both direct and indirect
  • 88 Ohio counties — all of them — in which Ohio State Extension offers support and services to the state’s $124 billion agricultural industry
  • 67,255 Students enrolled across Ohio State’s five campuses
  • 630,101 Alumni living in Ohio and across the world
  • $663.1 million Tax revenue to state and local governments

For Ohioans campaign logo

For Ohioans

From teaching and learning, to research and innovation, to health care, agriculture, the arts and more, the work of Ohio State students, faculty and staff is improving lives and strengthening communities every day, in all 88 counties.


Academic excellence

Today at Ohio State, 14,000 researchers conduct $1.6 billion in research each year, including $775 million in federal funding. The university’s research and development expenditures have increased more than $600 million over the past four years.

Ohio State is a top 15 research university, ranking ahead of esteemed research programs at Harvard, Yale and Georgia Institute of Technology, and just behind Stanford, Cornell and Duke. Great numbers, but what do they mean to Ohioans and the nation?

Distinguished University Professor Judit Puskas in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences helped invent a material used in coronary stents — a life-saving technology that has been implanted in more than 10 million surgery patients the world over.

Emeritus Professor Pierre Agostini was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the creation of techniques to capture electrons using pulses of light. Each pulse lasts just an attosecond, or one quintillionth of a second — the applications of which range from sweeping changes in microelectronics to how cars and big machinery operates.

Professor Judit Puskas smiling in lab.
Distinguished University Professor Judit Puskas
Pierre Agostini in a black shirt and lab eye protection in front of various machines during one of his visits to OSU campus.
Emeritus Professor Pierre Agostini

Over 25 years, some 4,000 experiments have been conducted aboard the International Space Station — all designed to improve life on Earth. Scientist John M. Horack helped build hardware and experiments as part of that remarkable spaceflight community — and sees the next chapter in space being shaped by collaboration and commercial opportunity.

Ohio State’s history as a research powerhouse effecting real-world change is long and varied — from the now ubiquitous Slow Moving Vehicle symbol (introduced in the early 1960s in response to a study of fatal tractor accidents) to a vaccine for feline leukemia (preventing, for the first time in the 1980s, a fatal disease in cats) and many more before, after and in between.

slow moving vehicle sign on the back of an amish buggy
  • $1.6 billion Research and development expenditures
  • 1,490 Patent applications filed since 2022
  • 2.5 million Square feet of assigned research space
  • 24 New portfolio startups formed since 2022
  • 1,177 Invention disclosures filed since 2022
  • No. 14 National ranking for research and development expenditures (HERD Survey)

Investing in ourselves as never before

Ohio State’s strategic plan, named for the university’s motto, calls for a $100 million investment to attract and retain eminent faculty to Ohio State. The investment in talent and culture will help grow the university’s research enterprise to $2 billion.

The commitment to faculty will also support a comprehensive embrace of artificial intelligence in research and teaching and learning — the first of its kind nationally. Ohio State’s AI Fluency initiative will ensure that every Ohio State graduate is AI fluent. And the new AI(X) Hub will help accelerate discoveries across all disciplines.

President Carter set a goal of doubling undergraduate enrollment in nursing and a goal to expand enrollment in veterinary medicine to 200 students — each designed to meet an urgent workforce need in Ohio. 

A 38-year veteran of the U.S. Navy, President Carter also set a goal for Ohio State to become the No. 1 university for veterans.

  • No. 1 U.S. News & World Report ranking among Ohio’s public higher-education institutions
  • No. 5 National ranking of online bachelor’s programs
  • No. 15 Ranking among public universities in the U.S.
  • Tier 1 Ranking of the College of Medicine, placing it among the nation’s top 16 medical schools for research
  • No. 15 Ranking among U.S. publics for commitment to military-connected students
  • No. 8 Ranking among U.S. publics for the full-time MBA program at Fisher College of Business
  • No. 1 Ranking among U.S. publics of the College of Nursing’s undergraduate and Master of Science degree programs
  • 94% Pass rate for first-time Ohio Bar Exam at Moritz College of Law, highest in the state
  • No. 9 National ranking of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the colleges of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, and Engineering
  • No. 13 & 15 Rankings among U.S. public universities for the College of Engineering’s graduate and undergraduate programs
  • No. 4 National ranking of College of Veterinary Medicine among schools accredited by the AVMA Council on Education
  • 245 Majors, minors, graduate programs and certificate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences alone

World-class clinical care

The Wexner Medical Center is committed to creating a healthier Ohio. Ohio State is one of the only leading public research institutions with a top-ranked academic medical center located on the same campus as our seven Health Sciences colleges.

Surgeon performing 10-way kidney transplant
Comprehensive Transplant Center in Ohio State's Brain and Spine Hospital

The Comprehensive Transplant Center has performed 13,600 solid organ transplants since 1967, a milestone achieved by fewer than 8% of all U.S. transplant centers. In December 2024, Ohio State performed one of the nation's largest single-institution living kidney donor exchanges. This miraculous chain of surgeries was orchestrated over two days, giving 10 kidney recipients a new lease on life.

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center — Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute is the only cancer program in the U.S. that features a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center aligned with a nationally ranked academic medical center and a freestanding cancer hospital on the campus of one of the nation's largest public universities. More than 1,500 researchers are advancing health for all Ohioans through discoveries in immunotherapy, drug discovery and many more.

  • 33 Consecutive years the Wexner Medical Center has ranked among the top health care institutions in the U.S.
  • 45+ Wexner Medical Center research centers and institutes in Ohio
  • 7 million+ Patient visits to the Wexner Medical Center, including those from each of Ohio’s 88 counties
  • 140 Shared core research laboratories with experts across virtually all areas
  • 7 Hospitals, including the new University Hospital, an 820-bed, 1.9-million-square-foot inpatient hospital opening in 2026
  • 54% College of Medicine alumni who reside in Ohio, improving lives throughout the state

Dr. Glen Barber is a globally renowned virologist and immunologist whose lab studies the body’s natural defenses against harmful microbes and finds the origins of infectious, inflammatory and cancer-associated diseases. He is one of 22 researchers worldwide selected as a Citation Laureate, many of which have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

More than 50 million people in the U.S. have a neurological disorder. Dr. Sheital Bavishi started Ohio’s first program offering intensive therapy to awaken patients from comas after severe brain injuries. Now, over half of patients at the Wexner Medical Center who are treated for a brain injury that left them unresponsive or minimally responsive have regained consciousness.

Dr. Glen Barber working in lab
Dr. Glen Barber
Mobile dental clinic during an exam
H.O.M.E. (Health Outreach Mobile Experience) Coach

The College of Dentistry serves Ohioans at 30 extramural sites, including two H.O.M.E. (Health Outreach Mobile Experience) Treatment Coaches that provide care to children at 15 to 20 Columbus City Schools and are soon to provide care to children in rural areas of the state.

Nearly 20% of Americans live in rural areas, but only 10% of physicians practice there. The Community Medicine MD Track, a program of Ohio State’s College of Medicine, prepares graduates for future careers in rural and small community medicine.


Student success

President Carter announced plans for a center of excellence to ensure that each Buckeye receives a paid internship during their time at Ohio State. To expand access and opportunity for more Buckeyes, he established three new scholarships:

  • The President’s Scholars Program provides full cost of attendance to Ohio students who score a perfect 36 on the ACT or a perfect 1600 on the SAT.
  • The Regional Campus Commitment covers tuition and fees for students from families with an income of $100,000 or lower who start at one of Ohio State’s regional campuses before transferring to the Columbus campus — or complete a four-year degree at a regional campus.
  • Buckeye Bridge, a 4-year degree completion program partnership with Columbus State Community College, provides students with a tuition-free path to finish their bachelor’s degrees at Ohio State.
  • 57% Share of Ohio State bachelor’s degree recipients who graduate with no loans/debt
  • 72.8% Undergraduate students who graduate within 4 years
  • $525 million Total financial aid received by Ohio State students in FY25 — of which 75% came from Ohio State sources
  • 93.5% First-year retention rate — among the highest in Ohio and the nation
  • 50,000 Buckeyes who received financial aid in FY25
  • 79% In-state undergraduate students who receive financial aid
  • 15.1% Increase in new first-year student enrollment at Ohio State’s regional campuses in Lima, Mansfield, Marion, Newark and Wooster (CFAES)

Ohio State’s student-athletes are also at the top of their games — inside and outside the classroom. In addition to being the reigning National Champions, the football Buckeyes are the only Division I football team to have a perfect Academic Progress Rate, which tracks student-athletes’ academic eligibility, retention and graduation rates (sorry Harvard, TTUN, etc.).

Across all collegiate athletics, our student-athletes maintained an average 3.4 GPA, the highest in athletics department history. Most impressively, almost all who graduated — 97% — obtained jobs, went to grad school or played professionally.