Unis miss the cut as innovators
Australian universities have again failed to make the cut for the world’s top 100 innovative universities.
Australian universities have again failed to make the cut for the world’s top 100 innovative universities in the latest rankings released by Reuters.
In the rankings, published last week, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard once again take the top three places.
In all, US universities fill 48 of the positions in the top 100, European universities have 27 spots and Asian universities have 23.
Looking at the list by individual countries, Germany and Japan have nine universities each; China, France and Britain have five each; Switzerland has three; Belgium, Canada, Israel and The Netherlands have two each; and Singapore and Denmark have one each.
Australia has never been listed in the top 100 in the four years Reuters has produced its rankings, which mainly reflect the commercialisation potential of a university’s research.
Reuters compiles the list by taking the world’s top 600 or so universities and research groups (based on their research publications in 2011 -16) and then examining their performance in filing patents and the success of those patents, including how many times they are cited by others.
Other factors taken into account include how often research papers from a particular university are cited in patents and the percentage of their papers that have a co-author from industry.
The universities that consistently do well in the innovation rankings are ones that have a steady stream of inventions which are patentable, and which lead to more patents.
Stanford has stayed on top with numerous developments in artificial intelligence, camera systems for self-drive cars and simulators that predict drug interactions before they get to the stage of human testing.
The big improver in this year’s innovation rankings is the University of Manchester, which rose 27 places to 53rd, largely due to its pioneering research in graphene, a form of carbon in which the structure of the atomic bonds creates a very strong material.
About a quarter of the University of Manchester’s 2011-16 patents relate to graphene.
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