The Nike Sports Research Lab is a research and development

Research and development

The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...

 institute

Institute

An institute is a permanent organizational body created for a certain purpose. Often it is a research organization created to do research on specific topics...

 owned by Nike

Nike, Inc.

Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...

 that is located in the Mia Hamm

Mia Hamm

Mariel Margaret "Mia" Hamm is a retired American soccer player. Hamm played many years as a forward for the United States women's national soccer team and was a founding member of the Washington Freedom. Hamm has scored more international goals in her career than any other player, male or female,...

 building on the company's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon

Beaverton, Oregon

Beaverton is a city in Washington County, Oregon, United States, seven miles west of Portland in the Tualatin River Valley.As of the 2010 census, the population is 90,267. This makes it the second-largest city in the county and Oregon's sixth-largest city...

 that spans a grand total of 175 acres (7,623,006.7 sq ft). They deal with creating new footwear

Footwear

Footwear consists of garments worn on the feet, for fashion, protection against the environment, and adornment. Being barefoot is commonly associated with poverty, but some cultures chose not to wear footwear at least in some situations....

 from athletic endeavors like track and field

Track and field

Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

, golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

, and basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

. They are also known as the Kitchen and the Oven (for most of their professional golf equipment). Their commercials have features famous NBA

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...

 and PGA

Professional Golfers Association

Professional Golfers' Association, , is the usual term for a professional association in men's golf. It is often abbreviated to PGA...

athletes talking postively about the products and the research behind them.