Thomson Reuters this week released a report listing the most innovative universities in Europe, with Imperial coming in 2nd on the list just behind KU Leuven in Belgium.

Innovation was defined by using ten different parameters, notably the volume of academic papers it published (indicating the basic research) as well as the number of patents filed by an institute (showing how well it furthers this research). A key factor in this may be the partnership the college has with Imperial Innovations (see the article on the previous page) which has helped to foster development of ideas coming out of Imperial.

Lagging behind Imperial were University of Cambridge in 3rd and University Oxford in 8th, with Manchester and Dundee coming inside the top twenty. The University of London, the parent that Imperial left the nest from in 2007 came in 30th, with 17 UK universities making the top 100. This is in comparison to 24 German universities, the most of any European country, showing how on the innovation forefront,the UK is a major player, but not quite the best.

It should be known that this takes the innovation of a university as a whole and so individual departments may be better from one university or another but overall Imperial stands tall.