Every year, Times Higher Education ranks universities within subject areas, that is six areas of knowledge. One of these is the Computer Science field. There are 13 indicators used for the subject rankings, organized into five groups. Among the key criteria is teaching, research, knowledge transfer, citations, industry income and international outlook.

While the overall World University Rankings 2016−2017 includes 24 Russian universities, the subject rankings for Computer Science include only two — ITMO University and Lomonosov Moscow State University. The Moscow University came in 43rd place, while ITMO, the world champions in programming came 56th. The strongest criteria that contributed to the high rankings were in citations (98.7) and industry income (68.7).

The results of the overall THE World University Rankings were announced September. The three leaders amongst Russian universities were Lomonosov Moscow State University, ranked at 188, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (301−350), and ITMO University which was included in the rankings for the first time and straight into the 351−400 range.