Switzerland houses two European research locations, CERN and IBM at Rüschlikon.

CERN

The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) is situated near Geneva (part of the installation crosses into French territory). It was founded in 1954 as a European joint venture, and now has 20 member states. Its purpose is to enable scientists to study the elementary particles which make up everything in the universe. This is done by accelerating particles almost to the speed of light and making them collide. The huge particle accelerators are circular tunnels built underground.

The most ambitious experiment yet will be conducted using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) due to come into use in 2008. It lies about 100 m below the ground straddling the Swiss-French border, and has a circumference of about 27 km. Its purpose is to track down the elusive Higgs-Boson particle. This particle, whose existence was first predicted in 1954 but which has never yet been observed, would help explain how particles obtain their mass.

A particle detector developed by the PSI will be used in this experiment to enable scientists to "see" the particles produced.

Work at CERN has produced a number of spin-offs, of which the best known is the world wide web, originally designed to enable scientists to communicate more easily with each other.

IBM, Rüschlikon

The European laboratory of the American high-tech company IBM is in Rüschlikon, near Zurich. IBM has had a research laboratory in Switzerland since 1956.

The staff come from a number of European countries. They are part of the international scientific community, attending conferences and collaborating in joint projects with universities and industrial partners.

The facility also hosts a constant flow of visiting scientists and students.

Two of Switzerland's Nobel laureates in physics – Heinrich Rohrer (1986) and Alexander Müller (1987) – won the prize for work carried out in Rüschlikon, in both cases jointly with German colleagues.