The UAB second university in Spain according to Reuters' World's Most Innovative Universities

The second edition of the Reuters News ranking of most innovative universities in Europe places the UAB in 81st position. It is the second university in Spain, following the UB which ranks 63rd in this year's edition. Behind the UAB are the Universitat de València in 82nd place, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) in 84th place and the Universitat Politècnica de València in the 85th place. The ranking identifies and classifies the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies, and help drive the global economy.

The classification assesses the level of innovation of universities according to data related to the number of patent applications presented by each institution between the years 2010 and 2015 (85 in the case of the UAB), relation between the patents presented and those approved (40%), and the commercial impact of the university's basic research, measured through the academic articles cited in the patents' registry (35.5 points of an average value of 44.84 points).

According to the classification, the most innovative university in Europe is KU Leuven in Belgium, followed by the Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge and the Technical University of Munich.

The ranking is based on data provided by Clarivate Analytics (before it separated from Thomson Reuters) and identifies 600 institutions in order to conduct an in-depth analysis of those which applied for a minimum of 50 patents during the 2010-2015 period.