Innovation

Queensland innovators sort sunnies

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GOLD COAST innovator Jim Richards wanted to tackle a particularly Sunshine State problem: safe yet accessible in-vehicle storage of sunglasses. It was a persistent problem dear to his heart, as he has made a career in the eyewear industry.

However, after getting Brisbane industrial design firm, Involve to assist in the products development, he found he had a far more versatile in-vehicle item storage solution on his hands. 

The Vyza Grab Strap began as a car visor-mounted storage solution to hold sunglasses, but during the rigorous testing phase the team realised it could be used to hold a multitude of other items such as mobile phones, garage door openers, wallets, pens and paper, credit cards, documents and more.

Mr Richards joked that the results of the Vyza development showed the simplest solution to a problem works the best.

“After 20 years in the eyewear industry, people kept telling me how they damaged their sunglasses in the car by sitting on them, or leaving them in the glove box or console, and I couldn’t believe that no one had attempted a product to remedy this,” Mr Richards said. In early testing, the product proved especially popular for people who spent a long time in their vehicles, such as drivers of courier vans, buses, taxis and trucks, as well as emergency service workers and sales representatives.

“Not only are customers using their Vyza to hold an assortment of goodies in the car, they’re also finding alternative uses for it including keeping documents, iPads and mobile phones held together when travelling, holding snow skis together when walking with them, and one has even been used as an emergency dog collar,” Mr Richards said.

He said the Vyza grab strap is adjustable to fit all cars, and incorporates three innovative silicone ‘grip strips’ on the inner surface to ensure that whatever is needed to stay in place will.

Like so many Australian inventors, cash to scale up production and new research and development have been hard to find.

To help fund further production and introduce Vyza to a global audience, the team behind it has decided to use the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.
“Our cash reserves are exhausted after spending more than a year getting the project to this stage, so we really need a little bit of help to get to the next level of seeking international agents, especially in the USA where we have already had some interest,” Mr Richards said.

“We’re offering Vyza Grab Straps to anyone who helps us reach our goal of $8000, and orders placed during the campaign will be delivered in time for Christmas.” 

Vyza Grab Straps are currently priced at $15 and Mr Richards said he hoped the exclusivity of the units as gifts would help to accelerate the capital raising.

www.vyza.com.au

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CSIRO fund backs Australian start-ups

THE CSIRO will establish a $200 million innovation fund to invest in the development of early stage technology opportunities from the public research sector, to boost their translation into commercial opportunities to be taken up by Australian industry.

The program was announced as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda, providing $70 million over 10 years to a CSIRO-managed innovation fund aimed at bringing to market early stage commercial opportunities based on what it calls “excellent science”. 

The fund will be supported by an investment of new revenue from CSIRO’s WLAN licencing and CSIRO will seek private sector investment to form a fund of about $200 million.

CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall said the fund would be a bridge to de-risk science and meet industry “half way with a 'beta', an investable proposition that industry can more comfortably take to market”.

“When the customer isn’t buying the product the entrepreneur doesn’t waste time blaming the customer – they change the offer,” Dr Marshall said. “This commitment will enable us to get some of our great science to market much more rapidly.

“Having a fund focused and administered close to the sources of invention and research is ideal for generating the innovation Australia needs. The fund will bring intense focus to high growth potential opportunities and at the pace that markets demand.”

Part of the government’s NISA package is the announcement of $5 million per year to expand CSIRO’s accelerator program to include other publically funded research organisations, accelerating a broad range of research for commercial adoption.

In addition to this, CSIRO has received $25 million per year increased funding dedicated to its data science efforts through the Data61 division.

Data61 has a mission of unleashing the potential in Australian industry, specifically focusing on cybersecurity, data analytics, a data research network to link business with researchers, and improving the data literacy of Australian business, Dr Marshall said.

He said the fund and accelerator were intensive hands-on operations focussed on deal creation and lifting scientists’ abilities in the fundamentals of customer first, product market fit and value creation by innovation.

“These opportunities will help improve translation of publically funded research into commercial outcomes, increase digital capability and stimulate innovation in Australia,” Dr Marshall said.

www.csiro.au

 

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KPMG energises eight start-ups

EIGHT technology start-up companies have taken part in KPMG Australia’s Energise program – said to be Asia-Pacific’s largest energy and natural resources (ENR) accelerator.

Energise started on July 21 and ran through to October 13 this year, with the participating start-ups selected from all over Australia.

KPMG Australia head of innovation services, James Mabbott said the businesses are taking part in an intensive program to develop and commercialise their products and services, all aimed at targeting the ENR sector.

“Accelerators such as Energise play a vital role in developing Australian start-ups and preparing them for global growth and success,” Mr Mabbott said. 

“The ENR sector has been at the mercy of a shifting landscape over the past few years, which means major players in the space are more willing than ever to embrace creativity, think differently and look at approaching old problems with new solutions.

“KPMG’s Energise accelerator aims to connect the innovation and new ideas coming out of tech startups not just with potential investors, but directly with a panel of industry-leaders such as BHP Billiton, Shell and Woodside, who can potentially become future partners and clients for the participating startups.

“If we can bridge the two sides of this equation it will bring tremendous value not just to the ventures and industry players involved, but to Australia’s entire start-up eco-system.”

Energise will culminate in a graduation night where each start-up will pitch to investors, sponsors and guests, with $200,000 in prizes on offer for the strongest start-up pitches on the night.

Right now, the Energise participants have access to a mentor panel which includes expertise from international start-up heavyweights Gary Coover, manager of Samsung’s Silicon Valley accelerator; Peter Rossdeutscher, the entrepreneur behind tech firms Intierra and Micromine; and Rohan Thompson, strategic partner manager for Google in Mountain View.

This is complemented from input and guidance from Energise program supporters including platinum sponsor Woodside, gold sponsors Resource Capital Funds and Jolimont Global, as well as a participant list that includes some of the leading players of the ENR sector in Asia Pacific.

KPMG is also providing access to more than 40 specialists to support the Energise start-ups in areas such as company set-up, product development and market insight.

“Accelerators have been around for years, but Energise is a new kind of accelerator – focused on only one vertical (energy and natural resources) and on a massive scale, with some 60 mentors and the involvement of over 14 of the largest supporting companies in the sector,” Energise program director Toby Gardner said.

“Not only is Energise different in terms of scale and vertical focus, but it also has a shift towards later stage start-ups – allowing the supporting companies to be able to evaluate, test, and potentially integrate these start-ups’ technologies during the 12 weeks – providing immediate results for everyone.

“This makes Energise an innovation program that is both unique in Australia and even by global standards.”

The ventures in the KPMG Energise program for 2015 were:

Ecocentric Energy: developing its ‘Numen System’ – a  system designed to revolutionise the decision making process in using and conserving energy in commercial buildings and industrial facilities;

Element Engineering: this mechatronic engineering firm has developed a new ‘internet of things’ (IoT) product which allows real-time monitoring of any product or structure through the use of modular devices and multiple forms of wireless communications;

Global Unmanned Systems: providing customised, integrated solutions for the natural resource and extractive industries sectors in respect of environmental and social baseline data acquisition, ongoing monitoring, surveillance, inspection and surveying using unmanned aerial vehicle and complimentary data processing and analysis technologies;

GreenSync: this high growth technology company provides a portfolio of automated demand management products and services for commercial and industrial energy users and network utilities to optimise power usage, including distributed energy technology for large scale.

Sandpit Innovation: this ideation consultancy specialises in the design, development and delivery of innovation to the ENR sector. Sandpit Innovation have co-developed and trademarked a number of new solutions such as the Spidler, mineRECON, Oust! and iCAS.

Sentient Computing: this established Perth-based software company that has been developing high quality applications for customers such as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Fortescue Metals Group, and Woodside since 2000. Sentient has developed MXV, a new venture that utilises data to create dynamic and interactive 3D environments; 

Skrydata: uses advanced analytic technology and processes to uncover insights from big data. Skrydata has worked on bespoke applications of its proprietary system for clients such as iiNet, Landgate and Cobham Aviation Services; and

Smith and Jackson (Notio Pty): which has developed an innovative system to install modular buildings materially faster, cheaper and with less environmental impact than traditional methods.

www.energise.kpmg.com.au

 

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IoT: Here’s the Thing.

MUCH is being made of the opportunities around the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) but the recent Innovation Series event in Brisbane heard that business leaders are going to have to cope with downside Things as well as upside Things.

One thing is certain – and keynote speakers Knowledge Economy Institute CEO Michael Briers and CQR Consulting co-founder Phil Kernick agreed – Things are never going to be the same again. 

On the opportunity side, Dr Briers said business leaders who understood the possibilities would be able to find new efficiencies, use more data to make better decisions and get into new areas of business that have not existed in the past.

“The notion of rendering the invisible visible is totally transforming the knowledge economy,” Dr Briers said. “The knowledge economy is now, right here. It is creating a whole new world of opportunities in creating value.”

“IoT is really about lighting up dark assets,” he said, “in ways that we have never imagined before. The future is now – it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Mr Kernick agreed the future was unevenly distributed and warned: “Here’s my definition of the internet of things: it’s all the technology you didn’t realise you were buying and connected in ways you don’t understand and doing things the manufacturer tells you that you don’t need to worry about …”

He said the evolution of IoT was inevitable as were the mistakes and anomalies that would befuddle business specifically and the population in general.

But Mr Kernick’s company – which is essentially a professional hacking and ICT security organisation – knows very well the dangers of smart objects and systems that can be ‘taken over’ by hackers.

“I run a hacking company. It is going to be great for us,” he said, as manufacturers ask CQR Consulting to hack-proof their devices. However, he is concerned about all the companies who do not secure cheap IoT products.

“We are going to do really well out of IoT,” he said.

THE UPSIDE THING

Dr Briers’ organisation, the Knowledge Economy Institute, is a great case example of how the starting point for a business in the evolving digital economy is often colossally different from where it ends up.

Knowledge Economy Institute (KEi) – led by Sirca and involving technology giants Cisco and Bosch along with a phalanx of Australian universities – evolved out of an organisation that wanted to make life easier for researchers and academics by organising data for them.

The logical basis for this business was that highly-paid professors and researchers should not be wasting their time on organising data in order to formulate reports and journal articles, but should spend more time thinking and evaluating what that data means. This should have produced better outcomes for academics – and it did – but then something came out of left field that would go on to transform the world’s financial markets.

“We founded a company in the late 1990s (Sirca) which wanted to collect data and make it easier for researchers to do research,” Dr Briers said. The goal was to get a PhD student through their qualification within the three year period.

“What we had found was that PhD students were spending 80-90 percent of their time wrangling the data trying to get it all together before they could do any useful analytics on that data. By the way, that still holds true now – in businesses … everywhere.

“We see businesses still hiring data scientists – they are highly paid – and they are still spending most of their time wrangling that data before they can do anything with it.”

Dr Briers helped create the not-for-profit company, Sirca, with a group of participating foundation universities and set out to render data and make it available for analytics.

They struck a key deal with Thomson Reuters to utilise their data – all the world’s financial exchange data, as it turned out – for academic purposes. Today, Sirca captures 2 million financial records per second.

“Every single exchange in the world, every single transaction. It is the biggest database of its type in the world,” Dr Briers said. “But we set out initially just with that academic purpose … to make academics more productive.”

Thomson Reuters gave Sirca all their data on computer tapes for free, from London, as long as it was used for academic purposes – “and we built the largest system of its type in the world for historical data,” Dr Briers said.

“We stated to see academics become more productive. Thousands of research papers have been written out of this. But it wasn’t until the early 2000s, and with the rise of algo (algorithm) trading, that Thomson Reuters asked what we were doing with their data.  So I took it to them and showed them what we were doing.

“They said, as you were sending the tapes back, we were deleting them … so we (Sirca) actually became the only source of this data globally, because academics wanted it – they loved that historical stitched together data.

“So the point here is that a new use case emerged – and that was algo trading.

“This was banks taking astro-physicists, putting them into a vault and paying them five times what they earned in academia and doing algorithms to beat the market – and to do that they needed historical data.

“So what we are quite proud of is that we have the same platform for the academic sector, delivering papers and research, and for the financial markets to make money, and also to the regulators who use the same data, same technology to keep them (the markets) honest. To monitor the market – insider trading and so on.

“It is what we call the triple helix of research, business and government use.”

WATCH THE DOWNSIDE OF THINGS

Upside outcomes like that of Sirca do not surprise QCR Consulting’s Mr Kernick – but technology journeys can also “head south” and that is where he urges business leaders to be cautious.

As businesses increasingly rely on the internet to monitor their machines and operations, the risks of hacks, outages and unintended consequences arise.

“We haven’t even started to imagine the things that IoT is going to cover,” Mr Kernick said.

“We can sort of understand it now, it’s kind of today’s tech and a little bit. But IoT is going to move so much further than that.

“Your home security system, your phone, your car, your car audio system – these are all little computers,” Mr Kernick said. “Every single one of them is connected in some way. In fact, everything that you have ever had the opportunity to update the firmware on is a smart thing. And there are dozens and dozens of them in your house today. You don’t know you are buying them. Your aim is to buy a functional thing – you don’t know it’s a PC in a different shaped box.”

He gave as an example the new electricity network approach in Victoria, where most home owners were happy to adopt smart meters as a way of reducing their power bills.

“We did the security testing,” Mr Kernick said. “Personally I’d have a smart power meter in my house, but people don’t realise that when you sign up for these things you also give permission for (an) authority to turn off your air conditioner – remotely – when the need arises.

“(The authority says) we can turn off anything that you plug in – remotely – because we are not managing your house, we are managing the ecosystem.

“We don’t want to black a suburb out, so we are just going to turn off a few people’s air conditioners… and hope it’s not 88-year-old Mrs Jones.”

The sort of IoT future Mr Kernick sees could have ramifications in all areas – even down to connected office furniture playing a role in workplace health and safety and employee wellness.

“We’ll get there. I have no doubt about that, but everything that we interact with will be smart – including your plate,” he said at the Innovation Series luncheon. “Which will know what’s on it and will suggest that maybe you don’t need that second bread roll. I know the person next to you didn’t eat it, but you probably don’t need it. And it will beep on your little smart watch and say, uh-ah – put it back!”

And there may be some unanticipated workplace relations consequences.

“Your furniture will weigh you,” Mr Kernick said. “When you sit down in (your) chair it will say, wow, gone up a bit. Perhaps get back up again …”

He said everyday devices that become medical monitors are almost here, and “every single medical device becomes connected”.

“What about your connected toothbrush? Mouth swabs are a good indicator of general health. So it’s likely your toothbrush will become a smart medical sensor …

“Are you looking forward to the connected toilet?” he asked. “Dead set. Happens in Japan today. It senses your wee and, if necessary, alerts you to medical conditions.” While that may be useful:

“When that data is available to your insurer, on the other hand, that is going to make your life slightly harder.” Not to mention complications if that information is made available to employers.

“So there’s the slightly scary, but now here’s the engineering reality: Somebody’s got to pay for this. This isn’t free. I love our academics who say, just connect it all, like, it’s magic.

“It’s not magic. It’s science. It’s engineering and it’s done badly.”

www.innovationseries.com.au

Innovation Series events, created and operated by Zernike Australia and supported by Business Acumen magazine since 2004, are a rare opportunity for business leaders, government leaders, researchers, educators and entrepreneurs to get together and hear from Australians at the cutting edge. The Innovation Series events are an opportunity for frank discussion on the issues that face Australia and to hear how collaboration and innovation can steer the country forward.

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Innovation Series: Digital futures in the spotlight

EXTRA >>

HOW digital technologies drive innovation across all industry sectors became much clearer for attendees at the recent Innovation Series event in Brisbane. The ideas put forward by three expert speakers were takeaway gifts for business innovation.

QUT professor Rob Perrons presented the aspirations for the new QUT-based PwC Chair in Digital Economy ahead of the official launch of this innovative and collaborative position. The PwC Chair in Digital Economy has since gone on to draw major digital economy research contracts, including with Australia Post. 

Professor Simon Kaplan, representing National ICT Australia (NICTA) as its skills and industry transformation director, demonstrated how a new digital technology incubation system can utilise available local data with big data on business transformation worldwide to help steer early stage and fast-growing businesses in directions for success.

NICTA has recently become part of CSIRO and the organisation’s expertise is now utilised in the CSIRO’s Digital Transformation unit.

Prof. Kaplan has applied this knowledge to spin out a new incubator and business development hub from NICTA in Brisbane, North Shore Labs, helping companies and their business leaders to better understand the phases of their businesses and drawing on big data to help project profitable growth pathways.

A good example of how NICTA can assist business n digital transformation came from Anisa Makalic, George Weston Foods’ head of supply chain for its Tip Top Australia New Zealand division. Ms Makalic explained how George Weston Foods had transformed its distribution systems, with the help of NICTA, to drive greater efficiencies while also boosting food security and workplace health and safety outcomes.

A theme of the event, from all three speakers, was the need for businesses to keep up-skilling and re-skilling their staff, to meet the demands of digital transformation and capitalise upon opportunities to innovate.

“As the urgency to become a ‘digital business’ intensifies, keynote presenters highlighted the need for business leaders and organisations to address how the digital disruption will affect their organisation, and how they will redefine themselves in the digital economy to ensure their future survival,” Innovation Series co-ordinator, Kellie Heiler of Zernike Australia said.

Prof. Kaplan gave an overview of how Australian business was falling behind in digital transformation.

“The problem is that the Australian economy has lost its competitive edge,” Prof. Kaplan said. “It actually lost it quite a while ago but the mining boom hid this fact – and now the mining boom has imploded and this is becoming a very obvious problem.

“If we want to remain competitive we have to transform our economy and digital is a big part of that. But the transformation is not actually about digital technology, it is about changing all the other parts of your business so you can take advantage of digital technology properly.”

He examined the Australia economy using the Atlas of Economic Complexity – which maps all the product types available in the world, developed by MIT at Harvard University in the US – calling it “probably the coolest thing I have ever seen”.

This map showed Germany producing a huge variety of products, biased towards the hi-tech end of the scale. The visual comparison of Australia’s production showed it well shy of Germany’s achievements, even though the societies considered themselves comparable. Australia tended to add very little value to its resources “which would be far better for our economy,” Prof. Kaplan said. 

“A consequence of that is we have very, very few large companies, but lots and lots of little ones. So our ability to transform and innovate is actually massively reduced,” he said. He pointed out that the proportion of small companies in Germany was about the same – however Germany also had lots of big and medium-sized companies where Australia had comparatively few.

“But you’ll notice that we have almost no mid-sized companies (Germany has many) and that is what ends up hurting us really badly,” Prof. Kaplan said.

He said the digital revolution forced companies to change on two axes: “You not only have to get bigger, you actually have to change your maturity, that is, in the way you use new technology and in the way you understand the opportunities that new technology affords for your business.

“The resources for this kind of transformation are not available to the kinds of companies that need it most. They do not have the money to hire in a PwC or a McKinsey expert, like the big companies do.”

Prof. Kaplan said the digital technologies may provide the very answer to the situation they have created – the opportunity was there to provide the expertise without the people, by using research and big data to deliver capability that up until now has been dispensed by a few highly-paid experts.

This is the basis behind his North Shore Labs SME Business Transformation Tools program, which uses a combination of modelling, analytics and patterns to diagnose businesses.

Research is done using existing data on the business and external information about ‘like’ businesses. The business leader is then shown a ‘pattern’ that describes the organisation and the ways it has been measured. Finally, business leaders are presented with ideas and suggestions to help the business perform better, provided over time in a semi-automatic way.

“We have to understand why it is these patterns are emerging in an organisation, and then we have to repair them so that the organisation stands the best chance of being internationally competitive into the future,” Prof. Kaplan said. “Finally, we can semi-automate the provision of advice (to the business).”

The overall message from Prof. Kaplan, Prof. Perrons and Ms Makalic was that businesses and their leaders in Australia must undergo a mind-shift to meet with the opportunities that the digital world offers.

“We talk about the difference between going digital and becoming digital,” Prof. Kaplan said.

“The difference is that going digital you keep doing what you are doing and whack in some technology on the side. The reality is that is actually what most organisations have done.

“Becoming digital is a fundamental change in your business so that all of the parts of it work properly in a digital economy.”

www.innovationseries.com.au

www.northshorelabs.com

www.nicta.com.au

www.chairdigitaleconomy.com.au

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Scientists launch research-to-business development initiative with Science Next Collaborative

EXTRA >> 

KEY Australian scientists have joined the Science Next Collaborative (SNC) to help speed up the process of commercialising promising research through new business links.

Founded by Sigma-Aldrich, the Science Next Collaborative is bringing together leading Australian scientists to facilitate an exchange of knowledge, ideas, educational tools and best practice pathways. The initiative is aiming to especially assist early-to-mid-career researchers (EMCRs) to help bridge the gap from basic and promising research discovery to translational research and its commercialisation.

“A thorough examination of the Australian scientific research sector uncovered that many researchers are struggling to achieve the final steps in their research continuum: successful commercialisation,” Sigma Aldrich Oceania marketing director for shared services, Reich Webber-Montenegro said. 

“This gap is even more real amongst early-to-mid-career researchers, and this may discourage them from continually pursuing meaningful and ongoing scientific endeavours. If this risk becomes a reality, Australia may see a huge dip in the innovation ecosystem and associated returns generated by a dynamic research industry.”

Associate Professor Derek Richard, who is the director of research for the School of Biomedical Sciences at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and an SNC Think Tank member, highlighted the importance of the initiative.

“Australia has a world-class reputation for scientific research outputs,” Assoc. Prof Richard said.

“We produce 3 percent of the world’s research whilst representing only 0.3 percent of the population,” he said, quoting from the July 2012 report, Shaping Up: Trends and Statistics in Funding Health and Medical Research.

However there seems to be additional challenges for today’s young researchers. University enrolments in science and the number of PhD students are stalling, which has led to industry-wide concern for Australia’s standing as a science and research powerhouse,” Assoc. Prof. Richard said.

“It’s usually difficult for young researchers to take their discoveries through to commercialisation, possibly due to a lack of experience in intellectual property protection, market research, lodging patents and gaining working capital, which are all fundamental elements in the commercialisation of research.”

University of Adelaide professor and SNC Think Tank member, Prof. Deborah White, who is also the director for cancer research at SAHMRI, spoke on behalf of the seven other Think Tank members participating in the initiative.

“We have a collective experience navigating the commercialisation journey and we share a strong appetite to help the next generation of leading Australian innovators,” Prof. White said.

“In joining the Science Next Collaborative, we are committing to establishing a framework that can provide genuine commercialisation pathways.”

The SNC Think Tank is a panel of seven leading Australian scientists who will debate the question: “how do we better enable Australian scientists, especially EMCRs, to successfully translate their research through to commercialisation?”

Also on the SNC Think Tank with Prof. White and Assoc. Prof Richard are Australian National University School of Chemistry research director, Prof. John Carver; Monash University deputy director of the  Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Prof. Peter Currie;  Macquarie University Department of Biomedical Sciences professor of Proteomics and Biochemistry and president of the Human Proteome Organisation, Prof. Mark Baker; University of Sydney School of Molecular Bioscience Professor David James; and Assoc. Prof. Kaylene Simpson, head of the Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

A publishable positioning paper will capture the current situation, key challenges and ways to better enable scientists to secure economic returns for their research. Educational resources will also be offered, including a series of forums and the launch of a dedicated online hub.

The Science Next Collaborative Forums will be held in selected cities this year. During each forum, EMCRs, students and other scientists will have a chance to hear from subject matter experts on best-practice models and examples from both academic and industry representatives, showcasing how to successfully bridge the gap along the commercialisation continuum.

The live SNC Hub will become an online destination for the exchange of academic and industry knowledge and ideas, and a showcase of best practice examples of successful commercialisation. It will also house all educational resources from the SNC Think Tank, including the publishable positioning paper, regular thought leadership articles and video content from the Think Tank meeting and upcoming forums.

“By launching the Science Next Collaborative, Sigma-Aldrich is playing a pivotal role in establishing dialogue and relationships across the industry by providing the network and support needed to assist early-to-mid-career researchers, so they may take their work from basic to translational research through to its successful commercialisation,” Ms Webber-Montenegro said.

“We are eager to see its positive impact within the scientific community, and look forward to the partnerships and success that Science Next Collaborative will build.”

www.sciencenextcollaborative.com

ends

Scientists launch research-to-business development initiative: Science Next Collaborative

KEY Australian scientists have joined the Science Next Collaborative (SNC) to help speed up the process of commercialising promising research through new business links.

Founded by Sigma-Aldrich, the Science Next Collaborative is bringing together leading Australian scientists to facilitate an exchange of knowledge, ideas, educational tools and best practice pathways. The initiative is aiming to especially assist early-to-mid-career researchers (EMCRs) to help bridge the gap from basic and promising research discovery to translational research and its commercialisation. 

“A thorough examination of the Australian scientific research sector uncovered that many researchers are struggling to achieve the final steps in their research continuum: successful commercialisation,” Sigma Aldrich Oceania marketing director for shared services, Reich Webber-Montenegro said.

“This gap is even more real amongst early-to-mid-career researchers, and this may discourage them from continually pursuing meaningful and ongoing scientific endeavours. If this risk becomes a reality, Australia may see a huge dip in the innovation ecosystem and associated returns generated by a dynamic research industry.”

Associate Professor Derek Richard, who is the director of research for the School of Biomedical Sciences at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and an SNC Think Tank member, highlighted the importance of the initiative.

“Australia has a world-class reputation for scientific research outputs,” Assoc. Prof Richard said.

“We produce 3 percent of the world’s research whilst representing only 0.3 percent of the population,” he said, quoting from the July 2012 report, Shaping Up: Trends and Statistics in Funding Health and Medical Research.

However there seems to be additional challenges for today’s young researchers. University enrolments in science and the number of PhD students are stalling, which has led to industry-wide concern for Australia’s standing as a science and research powerhouse,” Assoc. Prof. Richard said.

“It’s usually difficult for young researchers to take their discoveries through to commercialisation, possibly due to a lack of experience in intellectual property protection, market research, lodging patents and gaining working capital, which are all fundamental elements in the commercialisation of research.”

University of Adelaide professor and SNC Think Tank member, Prof. Deborah White, who is also the director for cancer research at SAHMRI, spoke on behalf of the seven other Think Tank members participating in the initiative.

“We have a collective experience navigating the commercialisation journey and we share a strong appetite to help the next generation of leading Australian innovators,” Prof. White said.

“In joining the Science Next Collaborative, we are committing to establishing a framework that can provide genuine commercialisation pathways.”

The SNC Think Tank is a panel of seven leading Australian scientists who will debate the question: “how do we better enable Australian scientists, especially EMCRs, to successfully translate their research through to commercialisation?”

Also on the SNC Think Tank with Prof. White and Assoc. Prof Richard are Australian National University School of Chemistry research director, Prof. John Carver; Monash University deputy director of the  Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Prof. Peter Currie;  Macquarie University Department of Biomedical Sciences professor of Proteomics and Biochemistry and president of the Human Proteome Organisation, Prof. Mark Baker; University of Sydney School of Molecular Bioscience Professor David James; and Assoc. Prof. Kaylene Simpson, head of the Victorian Centre for Functional Genomics at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

A publishable positioning paper will capture the current situation, key challenges and ways to better enable scientists to secure economic returns for their research. Educational resources will also be offered, including a series of forums and the launch of a dedicated online hub.

The Science Next Collaborative Forums will be held in selected cities this year. During each forum, EMCRs, students and other scientists will have a chance to hear from subject matter experts on best-practice models and examples from both academic and industry representatives, showcasing how to successfully bridge the gap along the commercialisation continuum.

The live SNC Hub will become an online destination for the exchange of academic and industry knowledge and ideas, and a showcase of best practice examples of successful commercialisation. It will also house all educational resources from the SNC Think Tank, including the publishable positioning paper, regular thought leadership articles and video content from the Think Tank meeting and upcoming forums.

“By launching the Science Next Collaborative, Sigma-Aldrich is playing a pivotal role in establishing dialogue and relationships across the industry by providing the network and support needed to assist early-to-mid-career researchers, so they may take their work from basic to translational research through to its successful commercialisation,” Ms Webber-Montenegro said.

“We are eager to see its positive impact within the scientific community, and look forward to the partnerships and success that Science Next Collaborative will build.”

www.sciencenextcollaborative.com

ends

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