The Duke Campus: The Research Triangle

As the name suggests, the Research Triangle is made up of three cities: Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill. Stretching from Duke to North Carolina State University in Raleigh to UNC at Chapel Hill, the area boasts one of the largest concentrations of Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s in the world.

It's home to around one million people, as well as 140 private, governmental, research, and non-profit companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Sumitomo Electric, Mitsubishi, Bayer Biologicals, Paradigm Genetics, Red Hat, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The Research Triangle is also home to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, a state-supported initiative that provides grants and creative services to support biotech companies, as well as the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, which houses the North Carolina Supercomputing Center.

The heart of the Research Triangle (and its namesake) is Research Triangle Park (RTP), a public/private, planned research park created in 1959 by leaders from business, academia, and industry who envisioned a place for cooperation and learning within the scientific and technological community. RTP scientists have developed everything from Astroturf® to AZT and won Nobel Prizes in the process. Today, the companies located in the RTP employ more than 45,000 hard-working, hard-thinking individuals.