$2.3m awarded for industry-linked research

Research

The University of Adelaide has been awarded more than $2.3 million to fund seven major new projects with industry partners.

The latest round of the Australian Research Council Linkage Grants includes funding for projects to improve crop and pasture production, expand our knowledge of how cells work, and devise novel therapies for cancer treatment.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Research), Professor Alan Johnson AM, said the University of Adelaide's success rate from its funding applications was above the national average and the total funding received was the highest of South Australia's three universities.

"What this highlights is the quality of our research, the diversity of our research and the relevance of our research," he said.

"We are good at blue sky research, as shown by our success in winning funding from other sources, but Linkage Grants underline our ability to work with industry and apply our findings to industry needs."

The largest of the new grants, worth $900,000 over four years, will support collaborative research by the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food & Wine and DuPont-Pioneer into the efficient use of nitrogen in maize. The collaboration was established by the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, of which the University is the largest shareholder.

"The aim is to identify nitrogen-linked traits that can be incorporated into new lines of maize, targeted at reducing grower dependence on nitrogen fertilisers that can have serious environmental costs," Professor Johnson said.

The other projects and the University's industry partners are:

• $315,000 to develop a critical component for laser range finders used widely in defence industries (School of Chemistry & Physics with BAE Systems Australia)
  
• $280,000 to improve the capacity for local firms to use greenhouse neutral waste and low-grade biomass fuels in cement kilns (School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Chemical Engineering with FCT-Combustion)
  
• $240,000 to improve knowledge of how cells and whole organisms sense and respond to oxygen deficiency, which has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as stroke and cardiovascular disease (School of Molecular & Biomedical Science with FibroGen Inc.)
  
• $227,000 to study how insects impact on the conservation and regeneration of casuarinas and how biocontrol agents might be used against casuarinas that have become environmental weeds (School of Earth & Environmental Sciences with the Australian Biological Control Laboratory and the SA Museum)
  
• $202,512 to further investigate how a patented combination of three biosynthetic molecules promotes effective tissue repair (School of Molecular & Biomedical Science with Tissue Therapies Ltd)
  
• $147,310 to develop a novel cancer therapy that will improve existing treatments by reducing the required dose and the risk of side effects (School of Molecular & Biomedical Science with CSL Ltd).

ARC Linkage Grants specifically fund projects in which academic institutions are working with industry bodies, businesses, state governments, community organisations or not-for-profit groups.

This announcement follows the awarding of ARC grants worth $12.7 million to the University of Adelaide last October to fund 47 other research projects.

Story by Nick Carne