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Cream of the crop: Stanford, MIT and Harvard are the world’s most innovative universities
25 Oct 2019
For the fifth consecutive year, Stanford University, MIT and Harvard topped Reuters’ ranking of the World’s Most Innovative Universities, a list that identifies and ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and power new markets and industries.
Stanford holds onto its top spot year after year because it produces a steady stream of innovations that are cited by other researchers in academia and private industry, a key measure of the ranking of the world’s most innovative universities, which was compiled in partnership with Clarivate Analytics, based on proprietary data and analysis including patent filings and research paper citations.
Eight of last year’s 10 highest-ranked universities remained in the top 10, and 18 of the top 20. The highest-ranked university outside the US, Belgium’s KU Leuven (#7), is a nearly 600-year-old institution that maintains one of the largest independent research and development organisations on the planet. The highest-ranked university in Asia is Pohang University of Science & Technology, or POSTECH (#12), an institution founded in 1986 by the South Korean steel company POSCO, noted for its unique ties to industry.
Overall, the United States continues to dominate the list, with 46 universities in the top 100. Germany is the second best performing country with nine universities featured. France climbs to third, with eight universities on the list; Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom each have six; China has four; the Netherlands and Switzerland have three; Belgium, Canada, Israel and Singapore have two, and Denmark has one. Considered on a regional basis, North America has 48 universities in the top 100, Europe has 32 (up five from last year), Asia has 18 (down five), and the Middle East has two. There are no universities in the top 100 located in Africa, South America or Oceania.
France shows the biggest improvement this year, with all its universities making big gains, including new entrants Aix-Marseille Université (#96) and Sorbonne Université (#56). In contrast, Japanese universities continue to lose ground on the global ranking: three Japanese universities dropped off the list in 2019, and the institutions that remained fell an average of 16 places.
For more on the Reuters Top 100, including a detailed methodology and profiles of the universities, visit https://www.reuters.com/innovative-universities-2019. For reprints, e-prints, logo and accolade licensing, permissions, plaques and other products, please visit http://bit.ly/2LjbptV.
These innovative universities are research-intensive and highly impactful. Source: Shutterstock
The Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities
| Rank | Name | Country |
| 1 | Stanford University | USA |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | USA |
| 3 | Harvard University | USA |
| 4 | University of Pennsylvania | USA |
| 5 | University of Washington | USA |
| 6 | University of North Carolina Chapel Hill | USA |
| 7 | KU Leuven | Belgium |
| 8 | University of Southern California | USA |
| 9 | Cornell University | USA |
| 10 | Imperial College London | UK |
| 11 | University of Texas System | USA |
| 12 | Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH) | South Korea |
| 13 | University of California System | USA |
| 14 | University of Erlangen Nuremberg | Germany |
| 15 | Johns Hopkins University | USA |
| 16 | California Institute of Technology | USA |
| 17 | EPFL – Swiss Federal lnstitute of Technology Lausanne | Switzerland |
| 18 | University of Cambridge | UK |
| 19 | Vanderbilt University | USA |
| 20 | Yale University | USA |
| 21 | University of Michigan System | USA |
| 22 | University of Minnesota System | USA |
| 23 | Duke University | USA |
| 24 | Northwestern University | USA |
| 25 | University of Illinois System | USA |
| 26 | University of Tokyo | Japan |
| 27 | University of Toronto | Canada |
| 28 | Columbia University | USA |
| 29 | Seoul National University | South Korea |
| 30 | Georgia Institute of Technology | USA |
| 31 | University College London | UK |
| 32 | University of Oxford | UK |
| 33 | University of Colorado System | USA |
| 34 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) | South Korea |
| 35 | Osaka University | Japan |
| 36 | University of Wisconsin System | USA |
| 37 | Baylor College of Medicine | USA |
| 38 | University of Utah | USA |
| 39 | University of Chicago | USA |
| 40 | ETH Zurich | Switzerland |
| 41 | Tsinghua University | China |
| 42 | Oregon Health & Science University | USA |
| 43 | Kyoto University | Japan |
| 44 | University of Montpellier | France |
| 45 | Sungkyunkwan University | South Korea |
| 46 | Technical University of Munich | Germany |
| 47 | Case Western Reserve University | USA |
| 48 | Technical University of Denmark | Denmark |
| 49 | University of Manchester | UK |
| 50 | Emory University | USA |
| 51 | University of Zurich | Switzerland |
| 52 | University of Pittsburgh | USA |
| 53 | University of British Columbia | Canada |
| 54 | Ohio State University | USA |
| 55 | Peking University | China |
| 56 | Sorbonne University | France |
| 57 | Kyushu University | Japan |
| 58 | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
| 59 | Ruprecht Karl University Heidelberg | Germany |
| 60 | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands |
| 61 | Tohoku University | Japan |
| 62 | Purdue University System | USA |
| 63 | University of Massachusetts System | USA |
| 64 | Universite Paris Sud – Paris 11 | France |
| 65 | Princeton University | USA |
| 66 | University of Paris Descartes | France |
| 67 | Nanyang Technological University | Singapore |
| 68 | Tufts University | USA |
| 69 | State University of New York System | USA |
| 70 | Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz | Germany |
| 71 | Leiden University | Netherlands |
| 72 | Hanyang University | South Korea |
| 73 | Rutgers State University New Brunswick | USA |
| 74 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | Japan |
| 75 | University of Munich | Germany |
| 76 | Yonsei University | South Korea |
| 77 | Universite Claude Bernard – Lyon 1 | France |
| 78 | Indiana University System | USA |
| 79 | Dresden University of Technology | Germany |
| 80 | University of Bordeaux | France |
| 81 | University of Iowa | USA |
| 82 | University of Freiburg | Germany |
| 83 | Boston University | USA |
| 84 | University System of Maryland | USA |
| 85 | Wake Forest University | USA |
| 86 | Zhejiang University | China |
| 87 | Carnegie Mellon University | USA |
| 88 | Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Israel |
| 89 | RWTH Aachen University | Germany |
| 90 | University of Connecticut | USA |
| 91 | Grenoble Alpes University | France |
| 92 | University of Florida | USA |
| 93 | Utrecht University | Netherlands |
| 94 | Technical University of Berlin | Germany |
| 95 | Tel Aviv University | Israel |
| 96 | University of Aix-Marseille | France |
| 97 | University of Virginia | USA |
| 98 | Ghent University | Belgium |
| 99 | Kings College London | UK |
| 100 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | China |
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