Illustration by Rob Hadley for Cure
Overview
Twenty universities ranked significantly higher in the Cure Innovation Index than their federal R&D spending would predict. Here's what they have in common.
Indiana University Indianapolis is not the first school that comes to mind when you think of biomedical innovation. It doesn’t carry the name recognition of a Johns Hopkins or a Stanford. Most people outside Indiana know IU for its Kelley School of Business or its Big Ten athletics.
But in the Cure Innovation Index, IU Indianapolis topped a category that some of the country’s most well-funded research institutions didn’t: it is one of 20 universities that punch far above their weight in turning research into real-world health impact.
What the Data Shows
The Cure Innovation Index evaluated 243 universities across three domains: research capabilities, entrepreneurial readiness, and market translation, the measure of how effectively institutions move discoveries toward patients and the market. Twenty of those universities ranked significantly higher in the Index than their federal R&D spending would predict, with gaps ranging from 48 to 128 positions between their funding rank and their CII rank.
IU Indianapolis is the most striking example. Its NIH funding and R&D spending rank 177th among the 243 universities in the Index. Its overall CII rank is 49th. That is a gap of 128 positions, the largest on the list. In market translation alone, IU ranks 15th in the country, ahead of institutions that outspend it many times over.
But IU is not an outlier. It is part of a pattern.
Three Paths to Overperformance
The 20 institutions on this list do not all look alike. They are all working with limited funding relative to their peers, but they differ in how they put that funding to work, building out different parts of their innovation infrastructure.
Eight of the 20 scored highest in Market Translation, meaning their strongest asset is the ability to move research out of the lab: through technology transfer, patents, industry partnerships, and translational impact. IU Indianapolis is the clearest case, but Worcester Polytechnic Institute tells a version of the same story: its funding ranks 241st out of 243 universities, but its market translation rank is 75th, a gap of 166 positions. The University of Akron follows a similar path, 237th in funding, 74th in market translation.
Six overperformers are driven primarily by research capabilities. Their scientific output and infrastructure outpace what their budgets would predict. SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, for instance, ranks 165th in funding but 84th in research capabilities. Meharry Medical College, one of the nation’s oldest historically Black academic health science centers, ranks 203rd in funding but 106th in research capabilities.
The remaining six are strongest in entrepreneurial readiness, the domain that measures how well an institution prepares researchers for commercialization through training, mentorship, and ecosystem support. The University of Memphis is the standout here: 223rd in funding, 77th in entrepreneurial readiness. Ohio University follows the same pattern, ranking 96th in entrepreneurial readiness against a funding position of 187th.
These institutions arrive at overperformance by different routes. But the through line is the same: translational performance is not determined by the size of funding resources alone.
What Drives the Gap
The schools on this list tend to be smaller, less resourced, and less visible than the names that dominate federal funding rankings. Several are engineering-focused polytechnics. Several are medical colleges or health sciences universities with narrow research portfolios but deep translational focus.
What they have in common is a deliberate institutional push to connect research to the market. At Indiana University, that push has a price tag. Two years ago, the Lilly Endowment contributed $138 million to create IU Lab, the Indiana University Launch Accelerator for the Biosciences, a facility designed to connect the university’s research enterprise directly to industry. IU President Pamela Whitten recruited David Rosenberg, Indiana’s former Secretary of Commerce, to run it.
“IU is a billion-dollar research enterprise,” Rosenberg said. “How do we transfer that into real-world impact? Understand what industry needs, and support where they want to go.”
The university has since announced partnerships with Cook Medical, Eli Lilly, and Zimmer Biomet, each structured around translational research and workforce development rather than basic science alone.
“The vast majority of universities are basic-research oriented,” said Vince Wong, President and CEO of BioCrossroads, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that connects corporate, academic, and philanthropic partners in Indiana’s life science industry. “IU has made a very intentional effort to unlock the economic development potential of their research enterprise. With support of entities such as ourselves, IU has been trying to shift the direction of its enterprise toward more translational efforts.”
The Overperformers
The following universities had the largest gap between their federal R&D funding rank and their Cure Innovation Index rank, listed in order of that gap.
Indiana University, Indianapolis
New York Medical College
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
University of Memphis
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
University of Akron
Ohio University
Illinois Institute of Technology
Northeast Ohio Medical University
SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
University of Mississippi
Albany Medical College
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Meharry Medical College
Loma Linda University
Creighton University
