Lab spotlight: Zurich Research Lab
The campus of the Zurich Research Laboratory, in the gentle hills above Lake Zurich, is characterized by its beautiful setting and pleasant landscape, which earned it the qualification of a nature park in 2004. "It is great getting out of the office on sunny days and truly enjoying the benefits of modern computing," says Salomon Billeter, who likes to take his laptop outside so that he can develop his programs under a huge tree and next to a miniature waterfall, which are at the heart of the campus.
The most notable thing about the lab may well be its diversity: The 300 researchers and other staff there represent some 30 countries from around the world. "IBM is a great community, and here in Zurich, it's like a family," says Rene Pawlitzek, a research engineer who returned to IBM and ZRL after eight years with other companies in the U.S. and Canada. The standard language is English, although official notices are delivered in English and German.
Karin Vey, ZRL's communications manager, characterizes ZRL as follows: "The inspiring high-performance culture, marked by mutual respect, drives the innovative power of our scientists and has been a key ingredient in its almost 50 years of success."
The undisputed highlights of its success story are the two Nobel prizes in physics bestowed upon its researchers: Gerd K. Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer for their design of the scanning tunneling microscope, in 1986, and J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller for their important breakthrough in the discovery of superconductivity in ceramic materials, in 1987.
Inspired by the special creative atmosphere, its scientists provide vital contributions to the IBM Corporation, in both fundamental and applied research. The spectrum of their research activities ranges from technology, hard- and software to services, which are of increasing importance in the on demand era.
Matthias Kaiserswerth, vice president of systems management and compliance area strategy and director of ZRL, sees the role of Research in services as twofold: to develop specific solutions but also, and even more importantly, to create assets and methodologies that can be applied to solving entire classes of similar problems, for example, in business transformation or optimization.
Part of the new focus on services is On Demand Innovation Services (ODIS), which is a partnership between IBM Research and Business Consulting Services, where researchers and consultants work together on client engagements to provide cutting-edge solutions.
In ZRL's three technical departments, Computer Science, Systems, and Science & Technology, four main areas of research are being pursued: security and privacy, advanced server technology, nanotechnology, as well as life sciences and health care.
ZRL's diversity not only extends to its people, but also its projects. One example is the interdisciplinary team of the ZRL's probe-storage project, internally dubbed millipede, which exploits the know-how of nanotechnology specialists and the expertise of storage-technology researchers.
Co-located on the Lab's campus is the Industry Solutions Lab, which offers executive briefings and demonstrations for customers - presented by researchers themselves - on new developments at IBM Research, thus providing "a window to research" as Walter Pletscher, head of the ISL, likes to call its role.
The opportunity to work on projects with a close relationship to products is part of what drew Patricia Sagmeister to the Lab. "In Europe, there are only a few places that have that. This is great, because on the one hand, you are free to do the research you'd like to do, but you know that whatever you're doing, you really have an impact."
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A quick look inside some of our labs:
Aerial shot of Zurich Research Lab |
A view from the outside |
A peek in the lab |
Another look inside |
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