The most innovative universities in the world 2018

North American universities account for nearly half of the list of the most innovative universities in the world, according to the latest Reuters ranking

October 17 2018

By Seeta Bhardwa

Email: seeta.bhardwa@timeshighereducation.com

North American universities dominate the list of the most innovative universities in the world, according to data collected by Clarivate Analytics in partnership with Reuters.

The fourth annual ranking of the world’s most innovative universities shows that 48 North American universities feature among the top 100 – 46 from the USA and two from Canada.

Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have claimed the top three spots, respectively.

Some 27 European universities are featured in the table, with KU Leuven in Belgium the highest-ranked at number seven. The highest-ranked university from the UK is Imperial College London at number eight.

Asia is represented by 23 universities, with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) just missing the top 10, coming in at number 11.

The list is based on empirical data, including patent filings from Derwent Innovation and research paper citations from the Web of Science, to identify the universities that are most successful in advancing science, inventing new technologies and powering new markets and industries.

The 50 most innovative universities in the world

Innovation Rank 2019	University	Country/region
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 Texas System	USA
7	KU Leuven	Belgium
8	Imperial College London	UK
9	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	USA
10	Vanderbilt University	USA
11	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	South Korea
12	École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne	Switzerland
13	Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH)	South Korea
14	University of California System	USA
15	University of Southern California	USA
16	Cornell University	USA
17	Duke University	USA
18	University of Cambridge	UK
19	Johns Hopkins University	USA
20	The University of Tokyo	Japan
21	California Institute of Technology	USA
22	Osaka University	Japan
23	University of Michigan System	USA
24	Northwestern University	USA
25	University of Wisconsin System	USA
26	Kyoto University	Japan
27	University of Minnesota System	USA
28	University of Illinois System	USA
29	Georgia Institute of Technology	USA
30	University of Utah	USA
31	University of Erlangen-Nuremberg	Germany
32	Ohio State University	USA
33	Columbia University	USA
34	Seoul National University	South Korea
35	University of Toronto	Canada
36	Tohoku University	Japan
37	University of Pittsburgh	USA
38	Yale University	USA
39	Sungkyunkwan University	South Korea
40	University of Oxford	UK
41	University of Colorado System	USA
42	Tufts University	USA
43	Baylor College of Medicine	USA
44	Tsinghua University	China
45	Technical University of Munich	Germany
46	Kyushu University	Japan
47	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Japan
48	UCL	UK
49	ETH Zurich	Switzerland
50	Purdue University System	USA