The original Watson remains at IBM's Research Headquarters in Westchester County, about 100 miles south of the school.

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The Watson system developed by IBM Research is a key innovation in this space, and over a hundred partners have adopted its Big Data platform already.

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Speaking at the 2011 High Performance Computing for Wall Street, Edward Epstein of IBM Research, explained that Watson was designed to work with natural language content and deep analysis drawing on all the available content.

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As part of a Shared University Research (SUR) Award granted by IBM Research, IBM will provide Rensselaer with Watson hardware, software and training.

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As part of a Shared University Research Award granted by IBM Research, the company will provide Rensselaer with Watson hardware, software and support services.

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The IBM supercomputer Watson beating humans at Jeopardy is a recent example of how they have applied research.

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