Australia needs to ‘level up’ on research commercialisation

The University of Adelaide’s Professor Mark Hutchinson who is President at Science and Technology Australia (STA) and Director of the Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP), will address the National Press Club on why Australia needs to ‘level up’ on research commercialisation – and how to do it.

One of the key themes of his leadership of STA has been to drive the case for deeper investment in research commercialisation.

“Great Australian science and technology can be turned into new Australian jobs and companies,” said Professor Hutchinson.

“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.”Professor Mark Hutchinson

Professor Hutchinson will address the National Press Club on Wednesday 2 March.

As President of the not-for-profit peak body STA for the science and technology sectors, Mark, who is a world leader in research commercialisation, represents 90,000 scientists and technologists nationwide. He typifies a new breed of Australian entrepreneurs, scientists, and innovators.

The CNBP, head quartered at the University of Adelaide, was an ARC Centre of Excellence with $38 million of funding committed for 7 years. It created 15 startup and spinoff companies under his high-energy leadership.

Professor Hutchinson is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and a Professor of the School of Biomedicine at the University of Adelaide.

“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,” he said.

Dismantling the traditional silos between the study of immunology and pharmacology, Professor Hutchinson’s research brings together engineers, physicists, chemists, and biologists who use light to understand what is happening at a cellular level in the brain and spinal cord. His ground-breaking approach has identified how human brains respond to drugs of dependence and holds out the prospect of better treatments for chronic pain.

Excellence in research translation and commercialisation is a priority at the University of Adelaide and it welcomes the recent investment committed by the Federal Government under the Economic Accelerator program to support these activities across the sector. Our commitment to succeed in this space is exemplified through our partnership with the University of New South Wales in the Defence Trailblazer: Concept to Sovereign Capability defence research commercialisation project, which is one of eight proposals shortlisted for the Federal Government’s new Trailblazer Universities program.