Dutch food university Wageningen beats MIT to No. 1 in new global Industry Collaboration Index as Japan takes three of the top five

Wageningen University & Research, the Dutch food and agriculture university, has beaten MIT to No. 1 in the Industry Collaboration Index (ICI), a new global ranking of 1,038 universities on research co-written with companies, published today by Global Research Partnerships (GRP). MIT is No. 2, and Japan takes the next three places: The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University and The University of Osaka. Cambridge is No. 10 and Oxford No. 29.

Smaller than MIT, Wageningen wins on intensity, durability and breadth. It co-wrote 1,518 verified industry works, 2.24 times what its mix of fields predicts (MIT: 1.81 times), working with FrieslandCampina and Danone every year, and leads Agriculture and Food Technology (1 of 194).

Harvard shows the reverse. No university analysed co-wrote more verified research with companies, yet it is No. 31, held back by breadth: 11 of its 12 leading company partners work mainly in medicine. It still leads three sector rankings, all in health, and its partnership with Google (216 joint works, every year from 2021 to 2025) wins Global Industry Partnership of the Year.

Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka sit far lower in GRP's Research Collaboration Index (RCI), which measures collaboration between universities: 149, 281 and 378 of 1,195. The University of Hong Kong, No. 1 in the RCI, is No. 261 in the ICI: the two indices reveal different strengths.

Most global rankings rest on reputation surveys, publications and citations, with collaboration at most a minor indicator. The ICI measures it directly through co-authored research, with no surveys or self-reported figures: from 2021 to 2025, the 1,192 universities analysed co-wrote 429,958 verified works with 40,786 company groups. For universities it is a benchmark; for companies, a map of which universities sustain partnerships in their field.

GRP checked 2,070,335 candidate university-company links against authors' affiliation text, confirming 1,148,566, and tested every overall position across 200 re-runs with the evidence resampled and the weights varied.

“Co-authored research is one visible, checkable trace of how universities and companies work together, and it deserves evidence as careful as any citation count. Every link in this index can be traced to what a researcher wrote about where they work,” said Daniel Llewellin of Global Research Partnerships.

The 22 Sector Awards go to the highest-scoring eligible partnership in each category, with no panel, nomination or payment. Oxford wins twice, with Google (Artificial Intelligence) and Rolls-Royce (Aerospace and Aviation); MIT wins with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Seoul National University with Samsung and Nagoya University with Toyota Central Research and Development Laboratories.

Europe holds 46 of the top 100 places, North America 38 and Asia-Pacific 16, ten of them Japanese. Mainland Chinese universities, often with state-owned partners, lead 14 of the 20 published sector rankings, Tsinghua five of them, including Artificial Intelligence (1 of 292). Leaders elsewhere: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Middle East), No. 216; Universidade de São Paulo (Latin America), No. 363; and University of the Witwatersrand (Africa), No. 467.

The GRP Partnership Intelligence Platform, opening to partner universities on Monday 19 October, turns both indices and published funder records into next steps, from confirming peers and finding partners to matching live funding calls. It cannot change any position. GRP confirms availability and pricing with each university; onboarding takes three days. Early access: globalresearchpartnerships.com/platform/#first-access

Since the RCI launched on 15 September, universities from Arizona to Sydney have celebrated their results. “I am incredibly proud that Queen Mary has been ranked 25th in the world for our research collaborations,” said Professor Colin Bailey CBE, President of Queen Mary University of London, in the university's announcement.

Full results: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/
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