Launching Your Career with Knowledge and Skills

The Basel region is known for its rich educational offerings. It is home to Switzerland’s oldest university and an internationally renowned institute for molecular biology, the Biozentrum. The University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) offers countless courses of study in dialogue with industry, and the density of companies in the region offers solid basis for an effective work/study education system. Many items on the Industry Night programme are explicitly targeted at individuals interested in an apprenticeship, trainee position, or a new job. You can easily filter, browse, save, and print these events by looking on our website under Programme and filtering for the category #Education&Science.

For some participating companies such as aprentas, training and further education is their core business. Founded in 2000, the center for basic and advanced training in scientific, technical, and commercial professions bridges theory and practice. Every year, it trains around 500 apprentices from over 80 companies, which include such prominent members as Novartis, Bachem, Endress+Hauser and ETAVIS. The training association also offers a number of customized courses and is actively involved in developing vocational training in Switzerland. At Industry Night at aprentas, you can discover your hidden talents, experiment in the laboratory, juggle with chemical formulas, and command the milling machine.

The younger set will find Muttenz-based JETZ Youth Technology Lab’s offerings especially exciting. Since 1978, the association has offered courses in electronics, technology, and (since 2020) computer science. The cozy project workshop space is where children and young people aged ten and above can gather to explore their interests and learn new facts and skills. Play is central, as are practical tasks, with participants soldering resistors, LEDs, and transistors, programming simple, and controlling robots. The JETZ offer is particularly suitable for families with children.

Also in Muttenz, the FHNW is one of Switzerland’s leading universities of applied sciences and a multifaceted institution. It is a diverse educational institution, a sought-after industry partner, and an attractive employer. In 2018, it opened its new campus in Muttenz, featuring an imposing 65-metre-tall cuboid building with a sculptural monolith in the centre of the vast entrance hall. At Industry Night, you can discover this spectacular campus on an exciting adventure trail, disappear into the atmospheric library, experience a different kind of petting zoo, and look over the shoulders of researchers in the laboratories.

If you’re planning to become your own boss and set up your own company, the Business Parc in Reinach is a good source of advice. The competence center has supported new start-ups in northwestern Switzerland for over 20 years, helping them to realize their business ideas, assisting them in founding a company, and offering the necessary tools: business plans, tips for finding customers, and answers to everyday questions about administration and accounting. Their Startup Marketplace is a chance to meet young entrepreneurs from various sectors at Industry Night, picking up tips and tricks for setting up your own company.

Stücki Park in Kleinhüningen on the northern edge of the city of Basel also offers an ideal environment for innovative start-ups. This location has an interesting history: until the 1980s, it was home to the Basler Stückfärberei AG factory, once one of Switzerland’s largest textile finishing companies. Indeed, textile production and finishing were one of the most important industries in the Basel region for a long time. But they gradually lost importance after the Second World War, and Basel underwent a fundamental structural change towards a services-based society, shaped by globalization, deindustrialization, and digitalization. In the mid-1980s, the garment dyeworks closed its doors. The complex was used for interim purposes for some years and the area developed into an early centre of the Swiss techno scene. The Bimbo Town art space and the legendary Planet E club became widely known, hosting some 4,000 ravers at weekends. In the new millennium, modern new buildings, a shopping center, and large premises for offices, laboratories, and businesses replaced the factory.

The open campus offers space for research, technology, and entrepreneurship – across an impressive 70,000 m2 of space. At Industry Night, participating companies will offer an exclusive peek behind the curtain. You can explore the state-of-the-art anatomy laboratory of the International Bone Research Association and experience up-close training sessions with realistic fracture simulations. You can immerse yourself in digital planning at Klima AG, electrical engineering at Schachenmann + Co., and the medicine of the future at Tech Park Basel. Osteosynthesis leader Medartis has long been based at Stücki Park. Their implants ensure that bone fractures heal optimally and quickly, from head to toe. At Industry Night, you can discover their high-tech production.