The world’s most innovative universities

US institutions top the inaugural Reuters Top 100 Most Innovative Universities table

September 16, 2015
Stanford University, Reuters Top 100 Most Innovative Universities 2015
Stanford University has topped the Reuters Top 100 Most Innovative Universities 2015 rankings tables, a new list of the world's most innovative institutions

Compare these rankings with the THE World University Rankings 2014-15


Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard have topped a new ranking of the most innovative universities.

The inaugural Top 100 Most Innovative Universities ranking from Reuters has been revealed following the publication of four top-15 tables based on innovation from Times Higher Education.

The US comes out top of Reuters’ table of 100 institutions, taking nine of the top 10 positions. The sole non-US institution is Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 10th place.

Imperial College London is the highest-ranked UK university in the list in 11th place, followed by the University of Cambridge in 25th and the University of Oxford in 40th.  

The ranking aims to identify which institutions contribute the most to science and technology and have the greatest impact on the global economy. It is based on 10 patent and research-related metrics, which have been compiled using proprietary data and analysis tools from the Intellectual Property and Science division of Thomson Reuters.

Elsewhere in Europe, Switzerland is a stand-out performer. With three universities on the list and a population of just over 8 million, it has more top 100 innovative universities per capita than any other country in the world. Its top institution, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, sits in 27th place.  

Japan is home to nine of the universities on the list – more than any other country except the US. Osaka University, its highest-ranked institution, is at number 18.

ellie.bothwell@tesglobal.com


Reuters Top 100 Most Innovative Universities 2015 results

Rank Institution Country
1 Stanford University  United States
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  United States
3 Harvard University  United States
4 University of Washington  United States
5 University of Michigan System  United States
6 Northwestern University  United States
7 University of Texas System  United States
8 University of Wisconsin System  United States
9 University of Pennsylvania United States
10 Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)  South Korea
11 Imperial College London  United Kingdom
12 Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)  South Korea
13 University of California System  United States
14 University of Southern California  United States
15 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill  United States
16 KU Leuven  Belgium 
17 Duke University  United States
18 Osaka University  Japan
19 Johns Hopkins University  United States
20 California Institute of Technology  United States
21 University of Illinois System  United States
22 Kyoto University  Japan
23 Georgia Institute of Technology  United States
24 University of Tokyo  Japan
25 University of Cambridge  United Kingdom
26 Princeton University  United States
27 Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne  Switzerland
28 University of Colorado System  United States
29 Ohio State University  United States
30 University of Pittsburgh  United States
31 Seoul National University  South Korea
32 Purdue University System  United States
33 Cornell University  United States
34 Tufts University  United States
34 Vanderbilt University  United States
36 Yonsei University  South Korea
37 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich  Switzerland
38 University of Toronto  Canada
39 Tohoku University  Japan
40 University of Oxford  United Kingdom
41 University of Utah  United States
42 University of Minnesota System  United States
43 Technical University of Denmark  Denmark
44 Yale University  United States
45 Columbia University  United States
46 Oregon Health & Science University  United States
47 Baylor College of Medicine  United States
48 Emory University  United States
49 Indiana University System  United States
50 Technical University of Munich  Germany
51 Tokyo Institute of Technology  Japan
52 University of Erlangen Nuremberg  Germany
53  University of Zurich  Switzerland
54 University System of Maryland  United States
55 University of Arizona  United States
56 Carnegie Mellon University  United States
57 University of Massachusetts System  United States
58 Keio University  Japan
59 Boston University United States
60 University of Rochester  United States
61 University of Munich  Germany
62 Hanyang University  South Korea
63 Florida State University System  United States
64 Pierre & Marie Curie University - Paris 6  France
65 Ghent University  Belgium 
66 Sungkyunkwan University  South Korea
67 University of British Columbia  Canada
68 North Carolina State University  United States
69 University of London  United Kingdom
70 Penn State University  United States
71 University of Chicago  United States
72 Tsinghua University  China
73 Delft University of Technology  Netherlands
74 University of Virginia  United States
75 Tel Aviv University  Israel 
76 Technion Israel Institute of Technology  Israel 
77 University of Freiburg  Germany
78 Wake Forest University  United States
79 University of Paris Sud - Paris XI  France
80 University of Paris Descartes - Paris V  France
81 Kyushu University  Japan
82 Case Western Reserve University  United States
83 University of Alabama System  United States
84 Joseph Fourier University  France
84 Korea University  South Korea
86 Arizona State University  United States
86 Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology  South Korea
88 University of Strasbourg  France
89 Nagoya University  Japan
90 University of Claude Bernard - Lyon 1  France
91 Rutgers State University  United States
92 Erasmus University Rotterdam  Netherlands
93 State University of New York (SUNY) System  United States
94 National University of Singapore  Singapore
95 University of Manchester  United Kingdom
96 Free University of Berlin  Germany
97 University of Aix-Marseille  France
98 Hokkaido University  Japan
99 University of Montpellier  France
100 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Germany

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