The prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities published their annual ranking earlier this week with Federation University jumping in to the top 100 after sitting in the top 150 for the past two years.

"We have been slowly climbing up through the ranks ... but this is the first year we have jumped in to the top 100 globally where we are competing with some huge universities," said Professor Dara Twomey, Dean of Fed Uni's School of Health and Life Sciences.

Federation University scored particularly highly for its sports science research, with top marks for citations per paper - the number of times an individual paper from the department gets cited in other research and papers - and for its international collaboration.

"It means that our work is really getting out there to a broad audience," Professor Twomey said.

"And the international collaboration looks at the percentage of papers that are produced in collaboration with researchers overseas ... which shoes that we have gone more global as our scores have increased in those areas over time."

The ARWU uses five indicators to rank sport science schools and departments, including: the number of papers indexed on the Web of Science academic website; total citations; citations per paper; papers published in journals such as Nature and Science; and the percentage of papers produced with international collaboration.

Professor Twomey said the university's new $16.5 million Health and Sports Precinct would put the department on an even better footing to further improve their world ranking.

"The new precinct will allow us to continue that trajectory, to help and improve our standing with the use of those facilities."

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Sport science is the study of how the healthy human body works during exercise, and how sport and physical activity promotes health - physically, mentally and socially through the study of biomechanics, physiology, sports psychology, motor control and learning, and functional anatomy.

Professor Twomey said strong research areas for Fed Uni's sports science department were around sports performance and injury prevention, as well as exercise prescription.

"It's pleasing to see Federation University move into the top 100 in the ARWU's Global Ranking of Sport Science Schools in 2020. We look forward to continual growth in this area with the commencement of our Bachelor of Physiotherapy and Bachelor of International Sport Management in 2021," said Federation University vice chancellor Professor Duncan Bentley.

"We're investing in new partnerships in sports science, so it's great to see our research in these areas being recognised as among the best in the world."