The University of Groningen  was founded in 1614, which makes it the oldest universities in the Netherlands after Leiden, and the third one in size (over 23,000 students, 450 professors and 5000 people working at the UG). Within the UG, the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials has ranked 4th worldwide in terms of citations and impact on Materials Science, according to Thomson Reuters (June 2011) and 9th in the ranking in Materials Science (1999-2009).