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

Reuters
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