Microsoft Research is one of the few real, non-university research institutions in the United States. No matter what you think of Microsoft products, the research they do is first class. In the olden times, a few decades ago, there were many industrial research labs that did science for the sake of science and not as an adjunct to product development. Sadly, those days are mostly gone. No more Bell Labs, no more DEC SRC, and so forth. Microsoft Research is one of the exceptions.