IDEA League

The IDEA League is a strategic alliance between five leading European universities of technology. On October 6, 1999, the IDEA league was formed by the signing of a memorandum of understanding between four leading European universities of technology: Imperial College London (United Kingdom), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), ETH Zürich (Switzerland), and RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Each has a respectable research-oriented profile and each is the largest producer of engineering and science graduates in their own countries. In 2006, ParisTech (France) joined the collaboration. The term IDEA comes from the first letter of each of the founding institutions.

One of the IDEA League's main ambitions is to re-establish Europe as a technological and scientific leader by bundling academic resources and knowledge.

Currently, three schools of the members of the alliance offer a Joint Masters in Applied Geophysics, where students spend one semester at each university (Delft University of Technology, ETH Zürich and RWTH Aachen University), then spend the fourth semester doing their thesis at one of the schools or in industry. The programme builds on the strengths and the complementary expertise in Earth Science at the three universities. It offers a combination of study and research. During the program students can specialize in either hydrocarbon exploration and management or environmental and engineering investigations, including geothermal energy exploration and management, and will also receive a solid background in the other speciality.

Students of the IDEA League universities are represented by IDEALiSTiC.