Swiss federal research institute
The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa; German: Eidgenössische Materialprüfungs- und Forschungsanstalt,[2] French: Laboratoire fédéral d’essai des matériaux et de recherche, Italian: Laboratorio federale di prova dei materiali e di ricerca, Romansh: Institut federal da controlla da material e da perscrutaziun,) is a Swiss research institution for application-oriented materials science and technology. It has three locations – Dübendorf, St. Gallen and Thun. As part of the ETH Domain, it is assigned to the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). For more than 100 years since its foundation in 1880, Empa has been a material testing institute. Since the late 1980s, it has increasingly transformed into an interdisciplinary research institute for materials and technologies.[3]