Groundbreaking ceremony for EPFL’s Innovation Square

Part of the EPFL campus, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

The groundbreaking ceremony for Innovation Square, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s (EPFL) on-campus site for corporate R&D labs, took place last week, with representatives of UBS Fund Management AG, the Science Park Foundation and HRS Real Estate SA.

Innovation Square, a group of five new buildings constructed in a public private partnership, will house research centres for large Swiss and multinational companies. The first occupant is computer peripherals giant Logitech.

Innovation Square joins a series of major construction projects initiated by EPFL in 2007: the Rolex Learning Centre, the four-star Starling Hotel at EPFL, and a student housing complex.

A public private partnership has allowed EPFL to continue development despite the economic crisis and the relative stagnation in Swiss higher education budgets. The first stage of Innovation Square, estimated to cost CHF100 million (€65.4 million), is scheduled for completion in spring 2010.

Companies wanting to locate in Innovation Square will be required to agree a scientific partnership with EPFL. Logitech is relocating product marketing and development teams from its Romanel-sur-Morges offices. Research to be carried out in the Innovation Square facility includes low-power electronics, wireless technologies and technologies for the digital home. In some senses EPFL is a home from home for the company. Its founder Daniel Borel is an EPFL alumnus, and Logitech’s most famous product, the computer mouse, was based on research in Professor Nicoud’s EPFL laboratory in the 1970s.