Is there a tool for visualizing the geographic locations of research?
this is an active aera of research in Geography of Science. We've been working with sociologists of science and bibliometricians to assemble a geocoded database of scientific publications, based on the Web of Science database.

We've not (yet) produced a publicly available interactive search tool like the one you describe, but it's a possibility. Instead, we have published several papers and an interactive tool to geovisualize the collaborations between co-authors of papers : http://www.coscimo.net/ (in french)

If you're interested in this question, i can provide a bibliography.


A conference paper :
http://sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Grossetti_Geographical_348.pdf
A research paper :
http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/20/0042098013506047.full.pdf