bird - 5:38 pm on Jan 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

btw that take on noble prizes from ibm lab in zurich ...(was that sarcasm driven? ) would love info on that one...

No need for sarcasm here, Zurich is a very attractive place for researchers of all kinds. Binning and Rohrer [nobel.se] received one for their work on electron microscopes in 1996[/url], Bednorz and Müller [nobel.se] in 1997 for pioneering high temperature superconduction.

All in all, Zurich has quite an impressive list:

2002, Chemistry, Prof. Dr. K. Wüthrich, ETH Zurich
1996, Medicine, Rolf Zinkernagel, University of Zurich
1991, Chemistry, Richard Ernst, ETH Zurich
1987, Physics, Georg Bednorz + Alexander Müller, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
1986, Physics, Gerd Binning + Heinrich Rohrer, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
1975, Chemistry, Vladimir Prelog, ETH Zurich
1949, Medicine, Walter Rudolf Hess, University of Zurich
1939, Chemistry, Leopold Ruzicka, ETH Zurich
1937, Medicine, Paul Karrer, University of Zurich
1913, Chemistry, Alfred Werner, University of Zurich

And that's only the people who actually worked in Zurich at the moment when they received the price. Since Nobel prices are often awarded decades after the relevant works have been published, this is misleading. Recipients who either studied, researched, or lectured in Zurich at some time in their career include Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and Felix Bloch.

eth incidentally ranks around 105 in global rankings (career dynamo..no idea how credible that is)

Recent rankings [ed.sjtu.edu.cn] have the ETH [ethz.ch] as nr. 25 worldwide, nr. 5 in Europe, and best in Switzerland. The University of Zurich [unizh.ch] is nr. 9 in Europe, and second place in Switzerland.

So we have:
- Two world class universities, both with world class CS research
- A number of research labs from other international corporations
- Relatively low corporate taxes (which may or may not be relevant for a research lab)
- People who speak several languages almost by default.
- Extremely high quality of living (cost of living is balanced by high wages)
- Located at the very center of Europe (east and west) with excellent travel connections by land and air

Not sure if they could use someone like me, or I might consider going back to my exotic little home country... ;)