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Top 100 most innovative universities in Europe 2018

These are the top 100 most innovative universities in Europe according to Reuters’ 2018 innovation ranking

    Seeta Bhardwa's avatar

    Seeta Bhardwa

    Editor, THE Student
    May 3 2018
    Top 100 most innovative universities in Europe

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    KU Leuven in Belgium has taken the crown as the most innovative university in Europe for the third year running, in Reuters’ latest innovation ranking. 

    The Reuters Top 100: Europe’s Most Innovative Universities ranks institutions across the continent that are doing the most to advance science, to invent new technologies and to boost new markets and industries. 

    Two universities from the UK enter the top five in second and third place (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany rounds out the top five in fifth place. 

    This year’s ranking shows that universities in smaller countries are perhaps demonstrating greater levels of innovation than those in the larger countries. For example, Belgium has seven universities in the ranking, but has a population of 11 million people. In contrast, Russia is the most populous country in Europe but no Russian universities made it into the top 100. 

    To compile the ranking, Clarivate Analytics identified the 600 global organisations that published the most articles in academic journals. This list was then reduced to institutions that filed at least 50 patents with the World Intellectual Property Organisation between 2011 and 2016. Each of these institutions were then evaluated on 10 different metrics focused on academic papers and patent filings and ranked accordingly. The full methodology can be found here


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    Top 100 most innovative universities in Europe

    2018 Innovation Ranking University Country
    1 KU Leuven Belgium
    2 Imperial College London United Kingdom
    3 University of Cambridge United Kingdom
    4 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland
    5 University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Germany
    6 Technical University of Munich Germany
    7 University of Manchester United Kingdom
    8 LMU Munich Germany
    9 Technical University of Denmark Denmark
    10 ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Switzerland
    11 UCL United Kingdom
    12 Delft University of Technology Netherlands
    13 University of Zurich Switzerland
    14 University of Oxford United Kingdom
    15 University of Basel Switzerland
    16 Montpellier University France
    17 Leiden University Netherlands
    18 Pierre and Marie Curie University France
    19 Paris Descartes University France
    20 Heidelberg University Germany
    21 Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Germany
    22 Free University of Berlin Germany
    23 Eindhoven University of Technology Netherlands
    24 University of Freiburg Germany
    25 Paris-Sud University France
    26 Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin  Germany
    27 Humboldt University of Berlin Germany
    28 Grenoble Alpes University France
    29 TU Dresden Germany
    30 University of Bordeaux France
    31 Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Germany
    32 University of Oslo Norway
    33 Ghent University Belgium
    34 University of Birmingham United Kingdom
    35 Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 France
    36 University of Glasgow United Kingdom
    37 Queen Mary University of London United Kingdom
    38 King's College London United Kingdom
    39 Technical University of Berlin Germany
    40 RWTH Aachen University Germany
    41 University of Strasbourg France
    42 Université Libre de Bruxelles Belgium
    43 University of Copenhagen Denmark
    44 Polytechnic University of Milan Italy
    45 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom
    46 Grenoble Institute of Technology France
    47 Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium
    48 Utrecht University Netherlands
    49 École Polytechnique France
    50 Goethe University Frankfurt Germany
    51 Paris Diderot University - Paris 7 France
    52 University of Munster - School of Business and Economics Germany
    53 Cardiff University United Kingdom
    54 Université Catholique de Louvain Belgium
    55 Hannover Medical School Germany
    56 Erasmus University Rotterdam Netherlands
    57 University of Amsterdam Netherlands
    58 University of Dundee United Kingdom
    59 Aix-Marseille University France
    60 University of Leicester United Kingdom
    61 Saarland University Germany
    62 University of Sheffield United Kingdom
    63 University of Tübingen Germany
    64 Vienna University of Technology Austria 
    65 Trinity College Dublin Ireland
    66 University of Milan Italy
    67 Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées France
    68 University of Leeds United Kingdom
    69 University of Barcelona Spain
    70 University of Southampton United Kingdom
    71 University of Stuttgart Germany
    72 University of Würzburg Germany
    73 University of Lorraine France
    74 University of Geneva Switzerland
    75 University of Twente Netherlands
    76 University of Lille 1 France
    77 Newcastle University United Kingdom
    78 University of Groningen Netherlands
    79 University of Nantes France
    80 University of Nottingham United Kingdom
    81 Sapienza University of Rome Italy
    82 University of Rennes 1 France
    83 University of St Andrews United Kingdom
    84 Aarhus University Denmark
    85 University of Surrey United Kingdom
    86 University of Liège Belgium
    87 Polytechnic University of Catalonia Spain
    88 Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena Germany
    89 University College Cork Ireland
    90 Jagiellonian University Poland
    91 Aalto University Finland
    92 University of Bonn Germany
    93 University of Barcelona Spain
    94 Maastricht University  Netherlands
    95 Technical University of Darmstadt Germany
    96 University of Antwerp Belgium
    97 University of Nice Sophia Antipolis France
    98 University of Warwick United Kingdom
    99 Polytechnic University of Valencia Spain
    100 University of Valencia Spain

    Read more: Top 100 most innovative universities in the world  


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