IBM Research is IBM's research and development division. It is the largest industrial research organization in the world, with twelve labs on six continents. The roots of today's IBM Research began with the 1945 opening of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University. This was the first IBM laboratory devoted to pure science and later expanded into additional IBM Research locations in Westchester County, New York starting in the 1950s, including the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1961.
