Switzerland Innovation (German: Schweizerischer Innovationspark, French: Parc suisse d'innovation), organised through the Switzerland Innovation Foundation is the Swiss national network of science parks. [1]
It was inaugurated by Johann Schneider-Ammann on 18 January 2016 and will be organised around five locations: [1]
Various companies and organisations are based at Switzerland Innovation Park locations, ranging from startups to multinational organisations.
Over 200 companies are listed as resident at the EPFL campuses in Lausanne and Geneva (Campus Biotech). [2] These include:
The Zürich location of the Swiss Innovation Park has had slow progress getting the necessary political green lights. [4] Nonetheless, various ETH Competition Teams have already found their new Headquarters in the new Dübendorf location. These include:
After its completion the Innovation Park in Zürich expects to house more commercial companies such as: [3]
The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland. Founded in 1969 with the mission to "train talented engineers in Switzerland", it is inspired by the École Centrale Paris.
ETH Zurich is a public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research organization in the world and has twelve labs on six continents.
Ernesto Silvio Maurizio Bertarelli is an Italian-born Swiss billionaire businessman and philanthropist.
The Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park is a technology park in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China. It is operated by Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park Development Co., Ltd. The park specializes in research in life sciences, software, semiconductors, and information technology.
The European Metropolitan Region of Zurich (EMRZ), also Greater Zurich Area, the metropolitan area surrounding Zurich, is one of Europe’s economically strongest areas and Switzerland’s economic centre. It comprises the area that can be reached within a roughly 80-minute drive from Zurich Airport. Home to many international companies, it includes most of the canton of Zurich, and stretches as far as the Aargau and Solothurn in the west, Thurgau, St. Gallen and parts of Grisons in the east, Schaffhausen in the north and Zug and parts of Schwyz and Glarus in the south.
Science and technology in Switzerland play an important role in the Swiss economy, which has very few natural resources that are available in the country. The Swiss National Science Foundation, mandated by the Federal government, is the most important institute for promoting scientific research.
The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) is a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute affiliated with three University of California campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area: Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. QB3's domain is the quantitative biosciences: areas of biology in which advances are chiefly made by scientists applying techniques from physics, chemistry, engineering, and computer science.
The Bertarelli Foundation is a private foundation founded by the Bertarelli family; brother and sister Ernesto and Dona Bertarelli, who are co-Chairs of the Foundation, and their mother, Maria Iris Bertarelli. It was established in 1998 in memory of Fabio Bertarelli and is based in Gstaad, Switzerland. For ten years, the Bertarelli Foundation focused on promoting an understanding of infertility, especially multiple gestations. This reflected the work of the family’s business, Ares-Serono, in the field, including its development of influential infertility treatment Pergonal. Following the sale of Serono, the Bertarelli Foundation refocused its activities onto the fields of marine conservation and neuroscience research, as well as projects in their local communities. The Foundation has a sister organisation in Italy, the Fondazione Bertarelli, which promotes cultural activities in Tuscany, where the family’s ColleMassari wine estate is located.
The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology is a Swiss research institution for application-oriented materials science and technology. It has three locations – Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun. As part of the ETH Domain, it is assigned to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). For more than 100 years since its foundation in 1880, Empa has been a material testing institute. Since the late 1980s, it has increasingly transformed into an interdisciplinary research institute for materials and technologies.
Swissnex is a network of education, research, innovation and art outposts aimed at connecting Switzerland with the world's innovation hubs. The network is managed by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in cooperation with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). There are currently five Swissnex branches: Boston (2000), San Francisco (2003), Shanghai, China (2008), Bangalore, India (2011) and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2013). One Swissnex office operated in Singapore from 2004 to 2015.
The Lausanne campus or Dorigny university campus is a large area in Switzerland where the University of Lausanne (UNIL), the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and several other institutions are located. It is in Dorigny, towards the west of Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The site is about 2.2 kilometres wide and 31,000 people study and work there.
Raphael H. Cohen is a Swiss professor, lecturer, author, serial entrepreneur, former business angel and academic director at MBA programs. He has a PhD in economics from University of Geneva, Switzerland.
The Campus Biotech is a Swiss institution hosting research institutes and biotechnology companies. The Campus Biotech is located in the former Merck Serono building, in Geneva (Switzerland).
Dübendorf Military Airport was a military airfield of the Swiss Air Force northeast of Dübendorf in Switzerland, located east of Zürich.
The Health Valley covers the Western Switzerland region, where the life sciences sector extends from Geneva to Bern, including the seven cantons of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Valais and Vaud. This cluster presents a critical mass of 1,000 companies, research centers and innovation support structures, representing today more than 25,000 employees. The Health Valley strives to animate the life sciences ecosystem of the region, by establishing thriving bridges between its ambassadors.
Sophia Genetics SA is a data-driven medicine software company with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts. It provides genomic and radiomic analysis for hospitals, laboratories, and biopharma institutions. The company was ranked among the 50 smartest companies by the MIT Technology Review in 2017. The company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, floating at $1.1B.
The Smart Living Lab is an academic research and development center dedicated to contribute to the future of the built environment. Located in Fribourg in the Bluefactory innovation district, it is affiliated with the Switzerland Innovation Park Network West EPFL. This living lab focuses its research activities on human comfort and well-being in indoor spaces, environmental performance of buildings, and the digital transformation of the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.
The Cyber Defence Campus (CYD Campus) is a competence centre of the Swiss Confederation for information security (cybersecurity). It is affiliated to the Federal Office of Defence Procurement, armasuisse and thus to the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS). It pursues strategic objectives that are defined within the Cyber Defence Action Plan, the DDPS Cyber Strategy and the National Cyber Strategy (NCS). It is the link between the public administration, industry and academia in research, development and training for cyber defence. The aim of the CYD Campus is to identify developments in the cyber area and drive innovation in the field of cyber defence.