The Sector Awards · 2026
Twenty-two awards: the Global Industry Partnership of the Year and one for each of 21 sectors, from artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and semiconductors to clean energy, advanced therapies and agrifood. Each category has up to ten finalist partnerships between a ranked university and a company group, each represented by an academic and an industry researcher who wrote a cited paper together, so every claim can be checked.
The Industry Collaboration Index measures every verified university and company partnership in the open scholarly record, whoever the company is. The Sector Awards recognise partnerships with independent companies, so partnerships with state-owned or state-controlled companies, with companies or universities on UK, EU, UN or US sanctions or restricted-party lists, and with primarily defence producers are not eligible for an award, in every country alike.
The awards celebrate partnerships between universities and companies that compete in open markets. Where the state owns or controls the company, the partnership is part of public policy as much as industry collaboration, and an award would be recognising the policy. We apply the rule to every country in the same way, which is why it also covers state-owned companies in Europe, the Gulf and Latin America.
No. The rule names no country. It is a published, universal test, and Chinese universities remain fully in the index and eligible for awards with independent companies.
No. Every verified partnership still counts in the overall index, the sector indices and each university's evidence page. The screen affects award eligibility only. The index measures the record as it is; the awards are a recognition, and a recognition can carry conditions.
The UK Sanctions List, the EU consolidated financial sanctions list, the UN Security Council consolidated list and the US Consolidated Screening List (including the Entity List and the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies list), plus the US Section 1260H list. We record the list version and date for every exclusion.
3,484 of the 17,101 university and company partnerships in the award candidate pools were not eligible, because the company group or the university met at least one rule (285 company groups state-owned or state-controlled, 52 on a list, 19 primarily defence producers; 17 universities on a list; some meet more than one rule). Each one is listed internally with the list or rule that applied, and the rule is published.
Nobody chooses them. In each category the winner will be the eligible finalist with the highest partnership score, calculated from the published formula on the frozen record. There is no panel, no nomination and no payment.
Factual corrections to the evidence are accepted until 17:00 BST on Tuesday 13 October. Questions about the screen can be sent through the request page, globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/submit; we will correct any listing that was matched in error and publish the correction.
Finalists are identified from the public record: authorship, affiliations and citations. No university or company applied, paid or was asked. The named people are co-authors of the cited paper and represent a partnership that involves many more people. Any finalist can ask for a correction, or to be shown without a name, through the correction route. State-owned enterprises are marked in the index and are not eligible for an award; listing a company is not an endorsement.
Independence. The index is free, public and independent. No commercial relationship with any university or company changes any position, and no one can pay to be included, excluded or moved.
Sealed until launch
Up to ten finalists in each of 22 categories, each represented by an academic and an industry co-author of a cited paper. Published at 09:00 BST, Thursday 15 October 2026.