Aarhus University is a comprehensive university with a profile that allows for research collaboration on all levels.

In all degree programmes, research and education are closely associated to ensure the quality and depths of the programmes. As evidence of the successful research carried out at Aarhus University, Professor Jens Christian Skou was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his mapping of the sodium-potassium pump. In 2010 Professor Dale T. Mortensen, a Niels Bohr professor in economics at Aarhus University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.

AU ranks 55 on the Leiden 2010 ranking, 84 on the 2010 QS-ranking and 98 on the 2010 Shanghai Jiao Tong University list.

Aarhus University has been a highly active participant in the Bologna Process and is the only Danish university awarded the ECTS-Label. This places Aarhus University in an exclusive group of around 25 European universities whose study programmes live up to the highest quality standards. The ECTS-Label eases the accreditation for international students and improves the conditions for international exchange.

As a leading European research institution Aarhus University manages 15 centres of excellence supported by the Danish National Research Foundation. These are centres of absolute world class renown:

• Centre for DNA Nanotechnology
• Centre for Geomicrobiology
• Centre of functionally Integrative Neuroscience
• Centre for Carbonate Recognition and Signalling
• Centre for Massive Data Algorithmics
• Centre for Materials Crystallography
• Centre for mRNP Biogenesis and Metabolism
• Centre for Oxygen Microscopy and Imaging
• Centre for Black Sea Studies
• Centre for Quantum Geometry of Moduli Spaces
• Centre for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series
• Centre for Insoluble Protein structures
• The Water and Salt Research Centre
• Centre on Autobiographical Memory Research
• Centre for Membrane Pumps in Cells and Disease - PUMPKIN