16 Institutions With the Most Decorated Biomedical Faculty in America

Sixteen American institutions stand out for the number of major scientific honors held by their biomedical faculty, according to a Cure Innovation Index analysis of awards data. The index ranks 303 US universities, medical centers, and research institutes on how well they turn research into health impact. Where decorated scientists work is one of the things it measures.

The count combines three kinds of recognition. The first is major external prizes: the Nobel in medicine, chemistry and physics, the Lasker Basic and Clinical awards, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, and both Vilcek prizes in biomedical science. The second is National Academy membership, which covers all members of the National Academy of Medicine and members of the National Academy of Sciences in biomedical and related fields. The third is NIH funding for high-risk research and research infrastructure, including the Pioneer, New Innovator, Transformative Research, and Early Independence awards. These grants back unproven ideas, the kind that struggle to clear a standard review panel.

Prizes and NIH awards cover the past decade. Academy membership does not expire, so a researcher elected in 1995 and still working counts the same as one elected last year. The tally reflects depth built over careers as much as recent wins.

The count is also not adjusted for faculty size. Larger institutions employ more researchers and collect more honors. The list shows where recognition concentrates, not which institution performs best per capita.

Recognition and results tend to travel together. Institutions with the most decorated faculty also score well on the Index's Market Translation domain, which measures how research moves out of the lab and into products, companies, and licensed technology. But that connection is not automatic. Prize-winning science can stay in the journal that published it. But the conditions that draw decorated faculty, meaning funding, facilities and colleagues, are largely the same conditions that move discoveries toward the market.

Here are the 16 institutions that employ the most decorated biomedical faculty in the country.

• California Institute of Technology

• Columbia University

• Harvard University

• Mass General Brigham

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• New York University

• Princeton University

• Rockefeller University

• Stanford University

• University of California, Berkeley

• University of California, San Diego

• University of California, San Francisco

• University of Pennsylvania

• University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

• University of Washington, Seattle

• Yale University