America's Leading Research Universities...
are keeping our nation first in the global race to lead in science through innovation, technology, and new scientific discoveries.
The global race for technological and scientific leadership is now more competitive than ever, with cutting-edge advancements and highly educated talent critical requirements for our nation's success.
Producing New Inventions
America’s leading research universities make up eight of the top 10 universities worldwide that were granted U.S. utility patents in 2023, according to the National Academy of Inventors. In 2022 alone, they produced 4,980 new patents.
University-Fostered Startups' New Innovations Give the United States a Competitive Edge
The robust ecosystem of U.S. startup businesses, fed in part by the new discoveries continually emerging from America's leading research universities, helps the United States keep its technological leading edge.
The new scientific and technological advancements emerging from America's leading research universities led to the creation of 622 new startup businesses just in 2022 alone. The discoveries also led to 5,724 transfers of new innovations to private sector businesses so they could further develop and bring them to market. All told, there have been a total of over 4,000 operational new tech and science startup small businesses that were formed out of leading university research innovations in the years leading up 2023.
Of the top 50 universities in the world for producing venture-capital-backed entrepreneurs in 2023, 37 of them were among America's leading research universities.
Continuously Creating the STEM Workforce That The United States Needs to Compete
America's leading research universities are continually educating and training the highly-educated STEM workforce that the United States needs to maintain its global scientific and technological lead in an increasingly competitive world.
Without that highly educated STEM workforce, the United States would fall behind. That is where our nation's research universities play a key role.
The United States needs the best talent to be educated right here. A recent independent report concludes that "the United States benefits from its highly ranked system of higher education, research freedom, and extensive research infrastructure, but these are areas that international competitors are investing in and modeling after the United States." The report goes on to say that "the international competition for STEM talent increases every year. The primary concern around foreign programs recruiting talent from the United States is the prospect of international competitors and adversaries accessing skills and knowledge of high economic or security value."
Besides educating our remarkable domestic STEM talent, the United States also attracts, educates, and retains the top talent from countries like China, India, South Korea, Canada, and Vietnam. By attracting the best and brightest researchers from around the world, we are able to out-innovate our competitors.
Breaking New Ground Here in the United States in Critical Emerging Areas
America's leading research universities are making advances in critical emerging areas like advanced semiconductor design and manufacture, microelectronics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and nanotech. Just a few recent examples include:
- The global race for quantum computing is on, with a number of America's leading research universities in front, including MIT; the University of Chicago; University of California, Berkeley; University of Maryland, College Park; Princeton University; University of Washington; Duke University; Stanford University; and Caltech.
- The Ohio State University partnered with Intel to break new ground in semiconductor fabrication for next-generation device technologies and training up the next generation of semiconductor fabrication experts in Ohio.
- The University of Michigan is creating the workforce and infrastructure to innovate and discover new semiconductor applications for the auto industry, particularly with electrification and autonomous mobility, as part of a public-private partnership that includes General Motors.
- Arizona State University, aiming to create a microelectronics innovation ecosystem to power the revival of American microelectronics, has partnered with the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker, Applied Materials Inc, to create a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing research, development and prototyping facility designed to accelerate the transfer of innovations from ideation to fabrication prototype.
- The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, along with Stanford University and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, worked together as part of the Higher Educational Initiative in Integrated Device Manufacturing to update microelectronics curricula to more effectively educate an expanded new generation of industry researchers, workers, and innovators.
- Purdue University's research park will soon be home to an advanced "packaging" semiconductor fabrication and R&D facility being built by a global pioneer and market leader in memory chips for AI, SK hynix. "Packaging" is the term for a new innovation to increase the power and versatility of semiconductors without increasing size.
- Georgia Tech's researchers are working to find new uses of nanotechnology and nano-materials to kill bacteria without antibiotics or chemicals and nanowires to increase the power of T-cell therapy for fighting infections and potentially cancer.
- The emerging field of synthetic biology, which combines engineering principles with biotechnology techniques to design new types of living systems, is being pioneered at leading research universities like Rice University; Northwestern University; Cornell University; University of Minnesota; University of Washington; MIT; Harvard University; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; University of Wisconsin-Madison; and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
- An independent report indicates that America's leading research universities make up nine of the top ten U.S. universities in terms of producing doctoral-level experts in artificial intelligence: Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Purdue University, Stanford University, MIT, University of Michigan, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, and University of California, Berkeley.
Learn more about how America's leading research universities are keeping our nation first in innovation, technology, and new discoveries: