Projecting success.
| Auteur | Maupin, Michael |
| Fonction | Feature |
Just over a half a year ago, apocalyptic predictions hung heavy over Switzerland's R&D scene. But with a reigning Nobel Prize winner for chemistry and an ambitious new project, 'Science City', Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) is aiming to become one of the foremost centers of research in Europe.
It was little over six months ago that Xavier Comtesse of the Swiss think tank, Avenir Suisse, made the controversial proclamation that Switzerland was suffering from a serious case of brain drain, as all its best scientific and technological tab ent was being drawn to schools and research platforms abroad in the face of what some have described as "anaemic" opportunities on the domestic research and development scene. Comtesse's provocative statement came six months after the announcement that pharmaceutical giant Novartis would be moving its worldwide research headquarters to the Boston area, where, according to Novartis chief Daniel Vasella, the infrastructure and financial conditions in and around the Cambridge, Mass. science-cluster are simply more advantagous than they are in Switzerland.
To make matters worse, domes tic and global economic downturn has had politicians both in Bern and the cantons calling for budget cuts. The education system has surfaced as one of their main targets. Which is a mistake. With virtually no natural resources to speak of Switzerland's greatest assets have almost always been the 'big three": reliability, competence and innovation. Without these three elements, Switzerland would almost certainly never been able to build the nation that it has. And the pillar of these three elements is undoubtedly Switzerland's education system; especially higher education, a reality to which the selfsame politicians have mainly paid a generous dose of lipservice while simultaneously dropping the axe on education budgets from kindergarten to the university level. Hanging in the balance of what amounts to a governmental pingpong match is, at least in past' the future of research and development in Switzerland. One Federal Council motion went so far as to call for an annual budget inc rease of only four per cent for the Promotion of Education, Research and Technology (ERT) from 2004 to 2007, while the National Council stuck by the original six per cent proposal made more than a year ago. The final decision was taken this past May by the Council of the States, which approved a yearly increase of five per cent over the four-year period from 2004 to 2007 - a compromise research institutions receiving federal funding will have to live with, like it or not.
Turning Point
But come December; hope was revived when Dr. Kurt Wutrich, a ETH professor and researcher who also maintains a lab at the Scripps Research Institute in la Jolla, California, was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Wutrich, who by Swiss law must retire at the age of 65, called on the Swiss government to invest in the county's future by increasing the ERT budget and more flexibility when it comes to retirement age stipulations, although he waves off the need for a new law as long as professors continue to receive the generous furnishings they do now. The five per cent ERT budget increase was perhaps a bit of a letdown hut Wutrich was granted a two-year extension on his lab at the ETH and has received additional funding straight out of Bern. Another more recent development on the Swiss science scene is a project which could prove to change the...
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