Swiss healthcare giant Novartis has committed $1 billion to the construction of a new R&D campus in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang High-Tech Park. Construction is well under way and once it is completed, the campus will be home to several Novartis divisions and the China Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. “We came to China to get access to the deep talent pool of scientists here,” said Mark Fishman, president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, the company’s global pharmaceutical research arm. Indeed, Novartis has one of largest long-term R&D investments in the industry. In 2012, the company spent more than $9.1 billion on R&D, accounting for 16 percent of the $56.7 billion in net sales it saw that year.