There are many famous universities around the world – like pop stars many don’t even need their institutional suffix, like Harvard and Oxford. But when venturing beyond the confines of southern Sweden it is rare that I meet anyone that has heard of Blekinge Institute of Technology. Even a friend from Stockholm thought I was studying in Denmark.

But this week I was given some comfort. My university was ranked 11th in the world in systems and software engineering research, and my main supervisor was ranked 8th amongst top scholars in this field (Wong et al., 2009).