Merkle: big boost for old university.
The founder of Vibro-Meter International, a mid-size Swiss company that has built a worldwide franchise in electronic control of machine vibration across industries, Adolphe Merkle, 83, has changed that overnight. Endowed with CHF 100 million (€75 million) of his personal fortune, his foundation will invest in nanosciences and nanomaterials researches threw the creation of a new institute in the university where he gained his PhD in Economics in the central Switzerland city of Fribourg.
With a budget of CHF 5 million a year, the Adolphe Merkle Institute will recruit four new professors to conduct research in nanotechnologies. The foundation will also support the recently created Centre for Nanomaterials (Frimat) at the university. A fifth professorship will be created in the field of innovation management and technology transfer.
Nano country, mega tax incentives?
Home of the first discovery that created the field of nanotechnology – the tunnelling microscope was invented at the IBM research centre in Ruschlikon in 1981 – Switzerland has consistently supported the science of tiny objects with public programmes. And as befits a nation with a tradition of precision industries, it spends the more per capita on nanotech research than any other country.
A new programme called Nano-Tera, bringing institutions such as Science|Business network member ETH-Zürich as well as the University of Basel and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne is currently being evaluated by Swiss authorities. If approved, it will give CHF 60 million over the next four years for research around networks and nanodevice systems.
With 10,000 students, the University of Fribourg is one Switzerland’s the biggest campuses, but it was not selected to be part of Nano-Tera. With fewer than 1,000 students in its science faculty, it lacks the critical mass to compete with the large nano groups at Basel, Lausanne and Zürich.
That might change now that the Adolphe Merkle foundation is giving Fribourg’s nanoscience the size and money it was lacking. The donation may also trigger other rich Swiss nationals to mimic his behaviour. Some cantons are already looking at possible changes in their fiscal regulation to encourage such moves
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