Wednesday National Press Club address to focus on “bench to boardroom” science






Professor Mark Hutchinson of the University of Adelaide will address the enduring topic of improving research commercialisation at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Hutchinson is President of Science and Technology Australia – which has lobbied for increased funding to translate university R&D – and Director of the Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics. The latter is an ARC Centre of Excellence headquartered at University of Adelaide, and has produced 15 startup and spinoff companies.

“Great Australian science and technology can be turned into new Australian jobs and companies,” said Professor Hutchinson in a statement from the university.

“A new generation of “bench to boardroom scientists” – brilliant science, technology, and engineering talent – will take their complex research breakthroughs from the lab bench into the boardrooms of the nation to secure the nation’s economic future.

“Science has had a crucial role throughout the pandemic. Australia will need to build science infrastructure and capabilities to face the next sets of complex challenges on the horizon.”

(More information on the event can be seen here.)

The federal government has recently announced measures to improve the return on national investment in public R&D. This includes funding for industry PhDs and fellowships, the Trailblazer University program – which will select four universities for $50 million funding each to commercialise their R&D in the six National Manufacturing Priority sectors – and the $1.6 billion Australia’s Economic Accelerator, announced during prime minister Scott Morrison’s Press Club speech in February.

AEA is a stage-gated program with grants awarded to progress research through Technology Readiness Levels and into the market. 

As InnovationAus has reported, the $2 billion of new measures will be spent across 11 years, and follows $1.47 billion in cuts to the Australian Research Council over the past nine years.

Picture: University of Adelaide

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