The University of Pittsburgh's football team may be struggling to regain a national reputation, but when it comes to spinning out technology firms, its researchers have cracked the top 10.

Pitt ranked sixth in the number of start-ups spawned by technologies developed by Pitt researchers in the fiscal year that ended in June, beating out such tech-heavy schools as the University of Minnesota and Cornell, the Association of University Technology Managers said yesterday.

Ten start-up companies were formed from Pitt researchers' technology, the national technology nonprofit said, citing technology licensing and commercialization numbers provided by Pitt and 164 other universities.

The top spot went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose technology was behind the formation of 20 start-ups, the association said.

Pitt officials said they could not provide the names of the companies or whether they have remained in the region for reasons of confidentiality. But they did say that seven of the 10 start-ups were in the health sciences, with the other three in the physical and information sciences.

"The university's success at forming companies is a clear sign of the strong entrepreneurial spirit of so many of our faculty," said Pitt provost James V. Maher.

He noted that many of the highly ranked schools in the survey have offices that have focused at commercializing university-bred technologies for "more than 20 years," while Pitt's efforts have been under way for only a decade.

Pitt's showing came even though its so-called "sponsored research,'' representing funding from public and private sources, did not crack the top 10.

Pitt received $558.9 million in sponsored research dollars from public and private sources, including the federal government, in the latest fiscal year.

Other universities receiving similar amounts of support spawned fewer start-ups -- the University of Colorado (9), Cornell (6) and Harvard (4), noted Dr. Robert Lowe, a professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University who frequently writes about technology transfer.

MIT, by comparison, received $1 billion in sponsored research, while the University of California, which had five start-ups in fiscal 2004, received $2.7 billion in sponsored research.

"It's culture," Dr. Marc Malandro, Pitt's director of the office of technology management, said about Pitt's top 10 showing.

"The longer you're in the business and the entrepreneurial culture grows within the university, the more start-ups come,'' he said. "The region is also getting better at supporting entrepreneurship and technology-based economic development."

Dr. Lowe pointed out that another critical indicator of a school's success with tech transfer -- commercializing technology developed within a university -- is the number of licenses it issues in any given year.

By that measure, Pitt is on par with its peers, issuing 53 licenses in 2004, in line with other universities receiving comparable research dollars.

The University of Minnesota, with $515 million in research funds, issued 100 licenses and spun out three start-ups, while Cornell, with $537 million in sponsored research, issued 80 licenses and formed six start-ups.

Other Pennsylvania universities such as the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State ranked higher than Pitt in terms of research funding, at $654 million and $606 million, respectively.

But both schools trailed Pitt in spinning out technology used in new firms. The University of Pennsylvania issued 87 licenses last year and spun out six start-ups, while Penn State issued 23 licenses and formed four start-ups.

Pitt's ranking in the nonprofit association's annual survey represents a slight uptick from its 2003 showing, when it received $513 million in sponsored research dollars, issued 44 licenses and formed eight start-ups.

Carnegie Mellon University didn't do as well as its Oakland neighbor -- it received $225 million in research dollars, issued 21 licenses and crated four start-ups.

But to compare Pitt and CMU would be like comparing apples and oranges, Dr. Lowe said, because CMU only receives only half as much sponsored research funds.

For the city to emerge as a technology hub, both Pitt and CMU must continue to grow the number of licenses and start-ups spawned by its research, he added.

"Having seven or eight start-ups emerge from university research'' every year over several years "is when you can tell we're doing well as a city," Dr. Lowe said.