Just curious on what your experiences were ? In terms of workplace structure, my overall impression is: very fancy workplaces, modern BASIC equipment compared to the US, but, perhaps not surprisingly, a tendency not to spend money on advanced equipment that is not available European-made, yet can still be very essential. This came a bit as a surprise, as the Swiss are so rich that a small area like Winterthur will boast 4 huge speparate public swimming pools with chrome slides, large fountains, and the hypermodern basins where the water level is at the ground level. Such pools are not supported by the admission, so money is there, but this money somehow does not find its way into laboratory instrumentation. Maybe a mercantilist policy. Yet, they do export equipment, Roche desktop sequencers, Teccan liquid handling robot parts, but they are a bit buy-shy when it comes to importing. My impression is anecdotal though.
Mike

Why don't you page Chemgoddess. She's a research scientist from the US who's been working in Zurich for the past couple of years and may be able to compare notes with you. I haven't seen her around lately, but I don't think she's moved back to the US yet.

I just came back after several months working at EPFL in Lausanne. In no way would I consider the facilities or equipment to be 'BASIC' in any sense of the word. At least as regards my experiences with the Swiss Federal Institutes - which otherwise have no real counterpart in the US - internal funding, infrastructure, and lab equipment are much closer to state-of-the-art than anything else I would describe. I have seen no reluctance to buy non-European equipment at all; only the intention to get the best piece of equipment for the task at hand.

That's my experience, anyway....

Lab Culture... and who says scientists don't have a sense of humour?

I was trying to overlook that....

(besides, I'm not a petrie dish kinda guy...)...

Any examples?

Buying stuff from the US is in general:

a) Expensive (i.e. shipping)
b) Risky (i.e. technical assistance in Europe)
c) Sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow (i.e. it's ridiculous that to get consumables I have to wait for 3 months... maybe they ship stuff on a raft when currents are aligned)

that's why the general tendency is to buy equipment in Europe.
As you said, this is your anecdotal experience, if you make an example we can figure out if it's your particular field or not.

In general, the mere fact that they built a synchrotron, a neutron source and are now building a X-FEL should be a big indication about how they love the big toys

Certain types of advanced laboratory equipment are not yet produced in Europe, but are for sale by European branches of the US manufacturers. Though milteny, for example, is trying to change this, it is still a fact. So, the choice is either to buy from a US branch firm in Europe, or not at all.

I can think of many pieces of equipment that are produced only in the US, and yet there is absolutely no hesistation in purchasing if that's what's needed. On the other hand, there are also certain types of lab equipment that are produced only in Europe (or Asia) and not in the US. Most any equipment manufacturer will have sales and/or service organizations located on different continents. Nothing unusual there.

I don't see any particular trends or policies at play here.

Personally, I work in the lap of luxury, surrounded by state of the art gear from whoever makes the best stuff (and gives the best service, as someone else pointed out). Colleagues have GC-MS-MS with TOF, a confocal microscope, diffusion NMR with all the trimmings ... so I have a hard time believing US labs have it much better.

As a super nerd, I'd love to know what this exciting gear that is only made in the US could be. Teraherz stuff or some microfluidics gear come to mind, but I could be miles off.

Again, can you name some examples? If it's something that you really need for your work I guess that it won't be a problem to have it. The three issues I mentioned before will be thrown back at you when you ask to buy stuff in the states, but now you can prepare a good answer

Since you mention this company I guess you work in the biological field. I couldn't be more far from it, so I trust you!

From your post its not clear if you are working for a Pharma or a Uni? Unless you are at a fed funded institution, the money available for Lab stuff might be quite limited. But at any ETH domain you should never be wanting for facilities or equipment.

There might in fact be a prejudice against importing *American* stuff, but this has more to do with the preception that German, Swiss and Japanese engineering and assembly offers better value and/or service. Importing in general seems not a problem.

Thanks for the resonses, to answer some of the questions posed,

a) it was a Uni lab

b) You are right when it comes to assembly, Swiss, German, Jap. is better, however

c) The US, though it is entangled in Iraq, and though people there are burdened by personal debt, does have massive scale, and yes, because of the scale, (and bec. people only get 2 weeks vacation) they are quite productive, and there are high end lifesci instruments which are not made in Europe. Do recall that PCR came from the US too, was then bought by Roche.

d) Note also that I wrote "more modern BASIC equipment" i.e. it seemed to me, for example, that the incubators were way more modern than what I have seen in US univ. labs, and there was overall more space, and the microscopes were more recent.
Sorry, I can't be more specific, you answered my question, it was anecdotal after all, an outlier, that is what I wanted to know.