Abstract:

2006 has been another successful year for FIRST. The demand for advanced micro-and nanotechnology from many research groups at ETH Zurich has further increased. Two new members joined the FIRST management team. We welcome Prof. Colombo Bolognesi from the department of electrical engineering and information technology and Prof. Andreas Wallraff from the physics department. Both are already intense users of the FIRST infrastructure and their research relies heavily on nanotechnology. Many other groups also from the chemistry and materials departments have started to use the FIRST machinery. It is foreseeable that the lab area provided by FIRST will be completely filled by the last major pieces of equipment to be purchased this year. During the last year 110 new users have been trained in order to get access to FIRST. Many of these users are semester and diploma students. These numbers document that FIRST serves its originally envisioned purpose very well, namely to provide the necessary infrastructure for cutting edge research and teaching in micro- and nano-science. While more and more projects are financed completely by external grants this general growth has been possible through the continuous financial support of FIRST by the board of ETH Zurich. We are truly grateful that the value of FIRST for the research landscape at ETH Zurich has been recognized.