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The California Institute of Technology (or Caltech) is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von K

Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is an American private Ivy League research university located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution. Today the university operates Columbia Global Centers overseas in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago and Nairobi.The university was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain. After the American Revolutionary War, King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. The University now operates under a 1787 charter that places the institution under a private board of trustees, and in 1896 it was further renamed Columbia University.That same year, the university's campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights, where it occupies more than six city blocks, or 32 acres (13 ha). The university encompasses twenty schools and is affiliated with numerous institutions, including Teachers College (which is Columbia University's Graduate School of Education). Barnard College, and the Union Theological Seminary, with joint undergraduate programs available through the Jewish Theological Seminary of America as well as the Juilliard School.Columbia annually administers the Pulitzer Prize. 101 Nobel Prize laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff, the second most of any institution in the world. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities, and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree. Notable alumni and former students of the university and its predecessor, King's College, include five Founding Fathers of the United States; nine Justices of the United States Supreme Court; 43 Nobel Prize laureates; 20 living billionaires; 28 Academy Award winners; and 29 heads of state, including three United States Presidents.

Cornell University is an American private Ivy League research university located in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge ? from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's motto, a popular 1865 Ezra Cornell quotation: ""I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study. The university is broadly organized into seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar. Cornell is one of two private land grant universities.[note 1] Of its seven undergraduate colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges, including its agricultural and veterinary colleges. As a land grant college, it operates a cooperative extension outreach program in every county of New York and receives annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but in actuality, is much larger due to the Cornell Plantations (more than 4,300 acres) as well as the numerous university owned lands in New York.Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission is offered irrespective of religion or race. Cornell counts more than 245,000 living alumni, 34 Marshall Scholars, 29 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates as affiliated with the university. The student body consists of nearly 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and 122 countries.

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.[6] In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James B. Duke established The Duke Endowment, at which time the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.The university's campus spans over 8,600 acres (35 km2) on three contiguous campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. Duke's main campus?designed largely by African American architect Julian Abele?incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot (64 m) Duke Chapel at the campus' center and highest point of elevation. The freshmen-populated East Campus contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles away is adjacent to the Medical Center.Duke's research expenditures in the 2012 fiscal year were $1.01 billion, the seventh largest in the nation. Competing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Duke's athletic teams, known as the Blue Devils, have captured 15 team national championships, including four by its high profile men's basketball team. In 2013, Duke was ranked 17th and 23rd in the world by Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings, respectively, while tying for 7th in the U.S. in the 2014 U.S. News & World Report "Best National Universities Rankings.

EPFL is considered to be among the world's most prestigious universities in technology. The three most influential and widely observed international university rankings, QS World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities and Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL No. 2, No. 1 and No. 2 respectively in the field of Engineering and Technology on continental Europe in their 2013?2014 rankings. In the rankings EPFL competes with Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial College London and its rival sister-institution, ETH Zurich, for the European top five spots in Engineering and Technology.QS World University Ranking 2013 ranks EPFL world No. 19, reaching world No. 8 in engineering and world No. 13 in the natural science subcategories. Academic Ranking of World Universities 2013 ranks EPFL world No. 13 and Europe No. 2 in the Engineering, Technology and Computer Sciences subcategory, behind Cambridge and notably ahead of ETH Zurich and American namebrand universities such as Caltech and Princeton. THE World University Rankings 2013?2014 ranks EPFL world No. 37 and world No. 15 in the engineering subcategory.EPFL typically scores high on faculty to student ratio, international outlook and scientific impact. The specialised CWTS Leiden Ranking that "aims to provide highly accurate measurements of the scientific impact of universities" ranks EPFL world No. 13 and No. 1 in Europe in the 2013 rankings for all the sciences.The reputation of EPFL as a strong research institution has been further strengthened by a number of high-profile projects, the most notable of these being the Blue Brain Project that in 2013 secured a 0.5 Billion Euro Flagship Grant from the European Commission.

ETH ZYrich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the city of ZYrich, Switzerland. Like its sister institution Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), it is an integral part of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain) that is directly subordinate to Switzerland's Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research.ETH ZYrich is consistently rated among the top universities in the world. It is considered the best university in continental Europe by the Shanghai Ranking ARWU, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings[4] and the QS World University Ranking. It is currently ranked 4th in Europe overall, and 8th best university in the world in engineering, science and technology.[5] Twenty-one Nobel Prizes have been awarded to students or professors of the Institute in the past, the most famous of which is Albert Einstein in 1921, and the most recent is Richard F. Heck in 2010. It is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and a member of the CESAER network.The school was founded by the Swiss Federal Government in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, serve as a national center of excellence in science and technology and provide a hub for interaction between the scientific community and industry.

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose history, influence and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature and soon thereafter named for John Harvard (its first benefactor), Harvard is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning, and the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its first chartered corporation. Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregation?alist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century Harvard had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869?1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a modern research university; Harvard was a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College.The University is organized into eleven separate academic units?ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study?with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are in the Longwood Medical Area. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $32.3 billion as of June 2013 Harvard is a large, highly residential research university. Its undergraduate program (comprising a minority of enrollments) emphasizes an ""arts and sciences focus"", while the graduate programs have a larger variety of disciplinary degrees offered. The nominal cost of attendance is high, but the University's large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. It operates several museums, and the Harvard University Library is the oldest library system in the United States, the largest academic and the largest private library system in the world.It has many eminent alumni. Eight U.S. presidents and several foreign heads of state have been graduates. It is also the alma mater of 62 living billionaires and 335 Rhodes Scholars, the most in the country. To date, some 150 Nobel laureates have been affiliated as students, faculty, or staff.

Imperial College London (legally The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university located in London, England which specialises in science, engineering, medicine and business.[5] A former constituent college of the federal University of London, it became fully independent on 9 July 2007 as part of the celebrations of its centenary.[6] Imperial has grown through mergers, including with St Mary's Hospital Medical School (in 1988), the National Heart and Lung Institute (in 1995) and the Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School (in 1997). Imperial College Business School was established in 2003. Imperial's main campus is located in the South Kensington (Albertopolis) area of Central London, with additional campuses in Chelsea, Hammersmith, Paddington, Silwood Park and Wye College. Imperial also operates the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in Singapore in partnership with Nanyang Technological University. Imperial has one of the largest estates of any higher education institution in the UK. Imperial is organised into four main faculties within which there are over 40 departments, institutes and research centres. Imperial has around 13,500 students and 3,330 academic and research staff and had a total income of

The Johns Hopkins University (commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland.The university was founded on January 22, 1876, and named for its benefactor, the philanthropist Johns Hopkins.[5] Daniel Coit Gilman was inaugurated as the first president on February 22, 1876.The institution pioneered the concept of the modern research university in the United States and has ranked among the world's top such universities throughout its history. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has ranked Johns Hopkins #1 among U.S. academic institutions in total science, medical and engineering research and development spending for 31 consecutive years. As of 2011, 37 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with Johns Hopkins over the course of 120 years. The university's research has been ranked as the third most cited of any institution globally, earning it a far-reaching reputation as one of the most prestigious universities in the world.Johns Hopkins maintains campuses in Maryland and Washington, D.C. along with international centers in Italy, Malaysia, China and Singapore. The university is organized into two undergraduate divisions and five graduate divisions on two main campuses

King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's is arguably the third-oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, receiving its royal charter in the same year.[4][5] St Thomas' Hospital, which is now a teaching hospital of King's College London School of Medicine, has roots dating back to 1173. In 1836, King's became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London. King's is based in the centre of London and organised into nine academic schools, spread across four Thames-side campuses in central London and another in Denmark Hill in south London. It is one of the largest centres for graduate and post-graduate medical teaching and biomedical research in Europe; it is home to six Medical Research Council centres, the most of any British university, and is a founding member of the King's Health Partners academic health sciences centre. King's has around 25,000 students and 6,113 staff and had a total income of