Pitt is among the top 50 universities at producing research that leads to patents

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 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.