June 14, 2016
KU Leuven, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge top the inaugural Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranking
LONDON – KU Leuven, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge lead the Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranking. The Reuters Top 100 aims to identify which institutions contribute the most to science and technology, and have the greatest impact on the global economy. The ranking uses proprietary data and analysis tools from the Intellectual Property & Science division of Thomson Reuters to examine a series of patent and research-related metrics, and get to the essence of what it means to be truly innovative.
How can potential partners, investors, faculty and students know if an institution is really transforming science and technology and affecting the global economy? To answer that question, Reuters set out to find and rank Europe’s top 100 innovative universities, building a methodology that employs 10 different metrics. The criteria focused on academic papers, which indicate basic research performed at a university; and patent filings, which point to an institution’s interest in protecting and commercializing its discoveries. Finally, they trimmed the list so that it only included European universities, and then ranked them based on their performance.
The most innovative university in Europe is KU Leuven, a Dutch-speaking school based in Belgium’s Flanders region which maintains one of the largest independent research and development organisations on the planet. KU Leuven earned its first place rank, in part, by putting out a high volume of influential inventions. Its researchers submit more patents than almost any other university in Europe, and outside researchers frequently cite KU Leuven inventions in their own patent applications.
Other key findings of the Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranking include the strong performance of universities in Western Europe, with 60 universities in the Top 100. Northern Europe comes in a distant second, with 24; Southern Europe has 15. Eastern Europe only has a single university on the list, Poland’s Jagiellonian University, ranked 92. German universities account for 24 of the 100 most innovative universities in Europe, more than any other country, while the United Kingdom came in second with 17 institutions on the list.
For more on the Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities, including a detailed methodology and profiles of the universities, visit www.reuters.com/most-innovative-universities-europe.
The Reuters Top 100: The Most Innovative European Universities
1 |
KU Leuven |
2 |
Imperial College London |
3 |
University of Cambridge |
4 |
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne |
5 |
Technical University of Munich |
6 |
University of Erlangen Nuremberg |
7 |
Delft University of Technology |
8 |
University of Oxford |
9 |
University of Munich |
10 |
University of Zurich |
11 |
University of Copenhagen |
12 |
Technical University of Denmark |
13 |
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich |
14 |
Pierre & Marie Curie University - Paris 6 |
15 |
University of Paris Sud - Paris 11 |
16 |
Eindhoven University of Technology |
17 |
University of Manchester |
18 |
University of Dundee |
19 |
Free University of Berlin |
20 |
Dresden University of Technology |
21 |
University Libre Brussels |
22 |
Ghent University |
23 |
University of Montpellier |
24 |
University of Freiburg |
25 |
University of Paris Descartes - Paris 5 |
26 |
Erasmus University Rotterdam |
27 |
University of Claude Bernard - Lyon 1 |
28 |
University of Strasbourg |
29 |
Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg |
30 |
University of London |
31 |
Humboldt University of Berlin |
32 |
University of Edinburgh |
33 |
University of Basel |
34 |
University of Aix-Marseille |
35 |
Grenoble Alpes University |
36 |
Charite Medical University of Berlin |
37 |
University of Paris Diderot - Paris VII |
38 |
Leiden University |
39 |
Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble |
40 |
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz |
41 |
University of Oslo |
42 |
Polytechnic University of Milan |
43 |
Ecole Polytechnique |
44 |
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology |
45 |
Cardiff University |
46 |
Saarland University |
47 |
University of Utrecht |
48 |
Trinity College Dublin |
49 |
University of Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III |
50 |
Vrije University of Brussels |
51 |
University of Amsterdam |
52 |
University of Milan |
53 |
University of Birmingham |
54 |
University of Munster |
55 |
Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen |
56 |
University of Leeds |
57 |
Universite de Bordeaux |
58 |
Aarhus University |
59 |
University of Sheffield |
60 |
RWTH Aachen University |
61 |
Universite Catholique Louvain |
62 |
Technical University of Berlin |
63 |
University of Twente |
64 |
University of Stuttgart |
65 |
University of Barcelona |
66 |
Hannover Medical School |
67 |
Vienna University of Technology |
68 |
University of Groningen |
69 |
University of Kiel |
70 |
University of Nottingham |
71 |
University of Liege |
72 |
Sapienza University Rome |
73 |
University of Loire Bretagne |
74 |
University College Cork |
75 |
Friedrich Schiller University of Jena |
76 |
Maastricht University |
77 |
University of Southampton |
78 |
University of Lorraine |
79 |
University of Bologna |
80 |
University of Rennes 1 |
81 |
University of Bristol |
82 |
University of St Andrews |
83 |
University of Bonn |
84 |
University of Warwick |
85 |
Polytechnic University of Catalonia |
86 |
Autonomous University of Barcelona |
87 |
Queens University Belfast |
88 |
Universitat Politecnica de Valencia |
89 |
Darmstadt University of Technology |
90 |
University of Hannover |
91 |
University of Rostock |
92 |
Jagiellonian University |
93 |
University of Santiago De Compostela |
94 |
University College Dublin |
95 |
University of Valencia |
96 |
University of Sevilla |
97 |
Polytechnic University of Madrid |
98 |
University of Padua |
99 |
Complutense University of Madrid |
100 |
University of Granada |
Notes to Editors
A webcast launching the European Top 100 will take place from 4-5.15pm CET on June 14 and can be watched at www.reuters.com/innovative-universities-livestream
Viewers will be able to Tweet their questions using the hashtag #Reuters100
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