It certainly seems likely that IBM’s Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center in Zurich is the same center that suffered an attempted bombing in 2010. Here’s more about the 2010 incident, from my July 25, 2011 posting about what happened to the bombers after they got caught,

I hoped to get this final update about the trio who tried to bomb an IBM nanotechnology facility in Switzerland posted sooner. The three individuals who were held and tried last week were sentenced to three years in jail. From the July 22, 2011 news article by Jessica Dacey on swissinfo.ch,

A 26-year-old Swiss-Italian from Ticino and an Italian couple aged 29 and 34 were found guilty by the Federal Criminal Court of conspiring to destroy the IBM centre in Rüschlikon, near Zurich, while it was under construction.

They were also found guilty of importing explosives into Switzerland, then illegally hiding and transporting them.

…

The three detainees were caught last year [April 2010] about 3km from the IBM facility in possession of 476 grams of explosives and other components needed to build an improvised explosive device.

This group does not appear to be affiliated or associated with the group that has been sending bombs to nanoscientists in Mexico. My Mar. 14, 2013 posting is the latest information I have on that situation.

Here’s more about Switzerland’s William Tell Award and IBM’s nanotechnology center from the Mar. 17, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

The Switzerland Trade and Investment Promotion, the Swiss federal agency that assists companies expanding internationally, bestowed its annual Tell Awards to IBM, Intermune, Kayak, Maxwell Technologies and Procter & Gamble. The awards, named for legendary Swiss hero William Tell, honor U.S. companies for significant recent investment projects in Switzerland. IBM received the award for the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center.

…  the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center is the latest extension to IBM’s research lab in Zurich. The facility is the centerpiece of a 10-year strategic partnership in nanoscience between IBM and ETH Zurich [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] where scientists research novel nanoscale structures and devices to advance energy and information technologies. The building represents an investment of $60 million in infrastructure costs and an additional $30 million for tooling and equipment which, including the operating costs, are shared by the partners. As the laudation states: The center demonstrates IBM’s “magnitude of innovation and reinvestment in Switzerland”.

So, those folks wanted to blow up a facility which cost, according to this news item, approximately $90 million for infrastructure and equipment alone. The level of investment certainly explains the interest from the bombers (success would have meant major mainstream news coverage and notice) and this recent award fro IBM’s investment. Here’s a bit more about the center (from the news item),

The Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center offers a cutting-edge, collaborative infrastructure for advancing nanoscience. It is part of IBM Research – Zurich, which was opened in 1956 as IBM’s first research laboratory outside the U.S. The nanotechnology center features a cutting-edge exploratory 950 m2 cleanroom fabrication facility and six uniquely designed so-called “noise-free labs” which shield extremely sensitive experiments from any disturbances, such as mechanical vibrations, electro-magnetic fields, temperature fluctuations and acoustic noise.

The news item also offers some information about why the center bears the Binnig and Rohrer names,

The center is named for Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, the two IBM scientists and Nobel laureates who invented the scanning tunneling microscope at IBM Research – Zurich in 1981, thus enabling researchers to see atoms on a surface for the first time. In 1986 Binnig and Rohrer received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this achievement, widely acknowledged for laying the foundation for nanotechnology research.

The Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center opened in 2011 and there’s more information about that,  Binnig and Rohrer, and their work with scanning tunneling microscopes in my May 26, 2011 posting which also features a link to an audio interview with the two Nobel Laureates.