IBM Corporation

The Rensselaer/IBM partnership dates back decades to the revolutionary IBM System/360, first announced in 1964. Today, IBM is engaging with Rensselaer in joint investigations of unimaginable potential. This extraordinary model for partnership empowers Rensselaer to be transformative, through our innovative teaching, and the global impact of our research.

The platforms flowing from this partnership encompass our IBM Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, the Advanced Multiprocessing Optimized System, or AMOS—after Rensselaer founder Amos Eaton—the most powerful supercomputer at an American private university. We are very proud that Rensselaer alumni were key to the development of the pioneering IBM cognitive computing system Watson—and delighted that we were the first university to receive the Watson system for exploration.

Rensselaer has partnered with IBM and the FUND for Lake George on The Jefferson Project at The Margaret A. and David M. ’40 Darrin Fresh Water Institute, which is investigating the stressors on the water quality of Lake George, New York using advanced sensors and advanced data analytics, integration, and visualization tools that are yielding a panoramic picture of the lake and the life within it—establishing an entirely new model for environmental stewardship that will be applicable to fresh water resources around the globe.

To give experts in many different domains the tools to meet such challenges, IBM and Rensselaer now are embarking upon another world-changing program, the Cognitive and Immersive Systems Laboratory, or CISL@EMPAC. The goal of CISL@EMPAC is to merge human cognition and artificially intelligent cognitive systems so we can push into new domains of knowledge.

We are honored to celebrate the many inventive enterprises IBM and Rensselaer have undertaken – collaborations that have truly established the benchmark to which other corporations aspire.