The University of Pittsburgh ranked 28th in the newly released World Top 100 list of universities with patents in 2024, released by the National Academy of Inventors, and ranked 20th among U.S.-based institutions.
In addition, Pitt came in 43rd in a list of top 50 universities powering global innovation, published earlier this year by analytics company Clarivate.
The National Academy of Inventors list is an accounting of universities that produce work that informs new inventions.
Released annually by the NAI since 2013, the Top 100 Worldwide Universities List spotlights the universities holding U.S. utility patents to showcase the important research and innovation taking place within academic institutions.
Pitt innovators were issued 102 U.S. patents in the calendar year 2024.
Combined with neighboring Carnegie Mellon University, that puts Pittsburgh at 174 total patents in 2024 — ranking the city seemingly fourth among U.S. cities in the World Top 100 behind Boston with 395, Austin 234 (due to the University of Texas system) and Chicago with 185.
Add in No. 22 University of Pennsylvania's 114 patents, and the commonwealth's 288 ranked behind only California (dominated by the No. 2 University of California system's 540 and three among the Top 15) with 926, Massachussetts at 606, Florida at 364 and Texas at 295.
“Today’s Pitt innovators are pushing the boundaries of science to produce breakthroughs across multiple disciplines, from diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease and brain aneurysms earlier, to treating aggressive cancers with cutting edge cell and gene therapies; to improving the reliability of the nation’s energy grid, and so much more,” said Evan Facher, vice chancellor for innovation and entrepreneurship and associate dean for commercial translation at Pitt’s School of Medicine.
“The Top 100 Worldwide list showcases the vital role U.S. patents play in moving technologies from bench to marketplace at academic institutions around the globe,” said Paul R. Sanberg, president of the National Academy of Inventors. “By recognizing and celebrating this crucial step in the commercialization process, we aim to highlight how intellectual property can benefit inventors and their institutions, as well as encourage them to pursue commercializing technologies that can have beneficial societal and economic impacts.”
Pitt is not only a leading research university, it’s also a world leader when it comes to putting research findings to work in the real world. That’s according to analytics company Clarivate, which earlier this year published its list of the top 50 universities powering global innovation — Pitt came in at No. 43.
The Clarivate list is an accounting of universities that produce work that informs new inventions. It identifies the universities named on academic papers that received the highest number of citations from patents granted to organizations on Clarivate’s 2023 Top 100 Global Innovators list, which features companies and organizations worldwide at the forefront of global innovation.
“Innovation rarely occurs in isolation; many groundbreaking inventions draw heavily on the foundational work of academics, whose findings are disseminated through journal publications,” the authors of the list wrote in the introduction.
Overall, Pitt accounted for 1,210 citations for 787 unique inventions on the Global Innovators list patents.
Pitt also ranked No. 19 in the National Association of Inventors’ list of universities granted the most utility patents in 2023, with 114 U.S. patents issued in that calendar year, up from 105 in 2022. And two dozen Pitt faculty were featured in another of Clarivate’s lists detailing the most highly cited researchers.
See monthly updates of the patents granted to Pitt researchers on the Innovation Institute’s website.