MIT No. 2 in the world as US universities take 37 of the top 100 and seven Sector Awards in new Industry Collaboration Index

Harvard co-wrote more verified research with companies than any other university in the index, yet is No. 31; its Google partnership wins Global Industry Partnership of the Year.

Title card for the Industry Collaboration Index 2026, United States results, by Global Research Partnerships: 37 US universities in the world top 100, more than any other country; MIT No. 2 of 1,038 and Caltech No. 8; seven Sector Award wins, including Global Industry Partnership of the Year; four of the 20 sector rankings led by US universities; 79 US universities in the world top 300. Results published 15 October 2026. — MIT is No. 2 in the world in the Industry Collaboration Index 2026, and US universities take 37 of the top 100 places and seven of the 22 Sector Awards. Results published by Global Research Partnerships on 15 October 2026. Image: Global Research Partnerships. Download the high-resolution image (2400 x 1350, JPEG)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is No. 2 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). US universities take 37 of the top 100 places, more than any other country; the United Kingdom is next with 12.

Only Wageningen University & Research, the Dutch food and agriculture university, ranks above MIT, and Japan takes the next three places. Caltech (No. 8) and Purdue University (No. 9) join MIT in the top ten, and with Stanford (No. 11) and the University of California, Berkeley (No. 12), seven of the top 20 are American, as are 79 of the top 300.

MIT co-wrote 1.81 times the industry research its mix of fields predicts, working with Google, Microsoft and IBM every year from 2021 to 2025, and its partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems wins the Clean Energy Transition award.

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

American universities lead four of the 20 published sector rankings, Harvard's three and Caltech's Quantum Technologies (1 of 40, provisional); only mainland China, with 14, leads more. They hold 13 top-three places, including Georgia Tech in Software, Cloud and Data (2 of 167) and UC San Francisco in Pharmaceuticals and Therapeutics (2 of 638).

The 22 Sector Awards go to the highest-scoring eligible partnership in each category, with no panel, nomination or payment. US universities win seven, the most of any country, and hold 45 of the 206 finalist places. Caltech and Stanford win with Google (Quantum Technologies; Software, Cloud and Data), the University of Pennsylvania with Acuitas Therapeutics (Biotechnology and Advanced Therapies), the University of Michigan with Ford Motor Company (Automotive and Mobility) and Iowa State University with Bayer (Agriculture and Food Technology).

The ICI and GRP's Research Collaboration Index (RCI), which measures collaboration between universities, reveal different strengths. Stanford is No. 10 in the RCI and No. 11 in the ICI, while Purdue is 201 of 1,195 in the RCI, MIT 33 and Harvard 8.

Most global rankings rest on reputation surveys, publications and citations, with collaboration at most a minor indicator. The ICI measures it directly, 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, and US universities took part in more than a quarter of them.

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 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 worldwide, including the University of Arizona, have published stories celebrating their results.

Full results: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/
US results: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/rankings/#country=US
Media enquiries: globalresearchpartnerships.com/ici/press/

ENDS

About Global Research Partnerships

Global Research Partnerships (GRP) publishes the Research Collaboration Index and the Industry Collaboration Index, two indices of equal standing built from the open scholarly record. The index is free, public and independent; no commercial relationship changes any position. globalresearchpartnerships.com

Media enquiries

Interviews, data and image requests: use the Industry Collaboration Index press and media page. Corrections and other requests about the index: the requests page.

Notes to editors

Coverage: 1,192 universities in 81 countries and territories, 221 of them in the United States; research co-authored with companies in the open scholarly record, 2021 to 2025. The 1,038 with at least 100 verified industry works are ranked, 203 of them in the United States. Bands: Platinum 1 to 100, Gold 101 to 300, Silver 301 to 600, none beyond.
US universities by band: 37 Platinum (top 100), 42 Gold (101 to 300), 67 Silver (301 to 600) and 57 ranked beyond 600; 18 were analysed but have too little verified evidence to be ranked.
Names: Purdue University in this release is Purdue University West Lafayette, as named in the index; Caltech is the California Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech the Georgia Institute of Technology and UC San Francisco the University of California, San Francisco.
US Sector Award winners: Harvard University with Google (Global Industry Partnership of the Year); California Institute of Technology with Google (Quantum Technologies); Stanford University with Google (Software, Cloud and Data); Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (Clean Energy Transition); University of Pennsylvania with Acuitas Therapeutics (Biotechnology and Advanced Therapies); University of Michigan with Ford Motor Company (Automotive and Mobility); Iowa State University with Bayer (Agriculture and Food Technology). Every one co-published in all five years.
US top-three sector positions (each out of that sector's own pool): Harvard University 1 of 220 (Biotechnology and Advanced Therapies), 1 of 638 (Pharmaceuticals and Therapeutics) and 1 of 323 (Medical Technology and Digital Health); California Institute of Technology 1 of 40 and University of Chicago 2 of 40 (Quantum Technologies, provisional); University of Colorado Boulder 2 of 15 and University of California, Berkeley 3 of 15 (Space and Satellite Technology, provisional); Georgia Institute of Technology 2 of 167 (Software, Cloud and Data); University of Pennsylvania 2 of 220 and Stanford University 3 of 220 (Biotechnology and Advanced Therapies); University of California, San Francisco 2 of 638 (Pharmaceuticals and Therapeutics); Stanford University 2 of 323 (Medical Technology and Digital Health); Kansas State University 3 of 194 (Agriculture and Food Technology).
Sectors: a university is ranked in a sector with at least 20 verified industry works in it; the sector score weights volume 30%, reach 25%, repeat partnerships (three or more works over two or more years) 25% and network influence within the sector 20%. Sectors with fewer than 50 eligible universities are provisional. The Robotics and Autonomous Systems ranking is withheld (9 eligible, below the minimum of 10); its Sector Award is still made.
Pillars, each a percentile among ranked universities: co-creation 30% (the share of a university's research co-written with a verified company, against what its mix of fields predicts), durability 20% (the share of that work in sustained partnerships), scale 30% (the size of its industry network) and breadth 20% (how varied its company partners' main research fields are).
Robustness: every published overall position is tested across 200 re-runs in which the works are resampled and each pillar weight varies by up to 25%.
The winner in each category is the finalist with the highest partnership score (volume of joint work 40%, years active 30%, field-weighted citation impact 30%) in the frozen Edition 1 record. No panel, nomination or payment plays any part.
The RCI and the ICI measure different things (collaboration between universities; co-authored research with companies) over different pools (1,195 universities in the RCI; 1,038 ranked in the ICI), so the two positions are printed side by side, never as a change from one to the other.
US share of the evidence: computed from the published link ledger (verified links of the 221 US universities), 27.2% of the unique verified works; printed as "more than a quarter".
What the index does not measure: it shows co-authored research between universities and companies, not confidential projects, consultancy or licensing, and it does not show that jobs, products, therapies or economic outcomes resulted from any partnership. Clinical trials and funded partnerships are reported on university profiles, not scored.
Industry and awards: market-producing state-owned enterprises count as industry, following the OECD Frascati Manual, and are marked throughout. Award eligibility is screened: partnerships with state-owned or state-controlled companies, with companies or universities on UK, EU, UN or US sanctions or restricted-party lists, or with companies that are primarily defence producers cannot win an award. The index itself counts every verified partnership.
Reuse: the rankings, sector indices, award finalists, company verification table, topic-to-sector map and full link ledger are released under CC BY 4.0; attribute as “Industry Collaboration Index, Global Research Partnerships”. The RCI and the ICI have equal standing, and every university profile links to both.
The University of Arizona's story on its RCI result: news.arizona.edu/news/u-ranks-no-1-southwest-top-20-among-public-us-universities-international-research

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