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.
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
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Pictures courtesy of Reuters Pictures
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