Uni collaboration with industry required
South Australia’s business community has urged the Federal Government to revamp its research funding model for the higher education sector to achieve greater collaboration with industry and more commercial outcomes.
As the Federal Government continues to try and attract Senate support for reforming the higher education sector, Business SA says “the real game changer for innovation within Australian businesses will occur once we begin to adequately leverage the research capacity of our highly regarded universities to achieve better commercial outcomes for industry”.
“The key to this change requires the Federal Government to embark on an overhaul of the university funding model to ensure there are adequate incentives in place to promote university-industry collaboration,” Business SA says in a submission to the Senate inquiry into the future of Australia’s automotive industry.
“This will involve allocating at least 20% of research funding to projects which partner with industry for commercial outcomes and ensuring Australia’s university quality benchmarking system for research funding, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), is appropriately re-structured to recognise the impact of university research in industry.
“At present, universities are typically focussed on research to improve their ranking in order to attract the international students vital to their funding needs. If the underlying funding drivers are fundamentally restructured, universities will be more driven to collaborate with industry.”
The primary public funder of research, the Australian Research Council, recently announced $354 million in grants for 2015. Under Business SA’s proposal, $70 million of such research funding would need to involve industry collaborations. Sixty nine projects in South Australia attracted $25 million in ARC grant income for 2015.
Business SA’s call for enhanced collaboration with industry came as Flinders University opened a new $120 million teaching and research facility on the former Mitsubishi site at Tonsley. The new building is home to the University’s School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics, the Medical Device Research Institute, New Venture Institute and commercialisation arm, Flinders Partners.
Dean of the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics, Professor John Roddick, says his school’s research strengths include biomechanics, medical devices, maritime systems and intelligent transport systems.
“As the deadline for closure of another South Australian car manufacturing plant looms, companies looking to retool and diversify are approaching the University and collaboration is burgeoning,” Roddick said.
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Flinders also announced an enhanced collaboration with international network and communications company, Cisco, to support high quality research in emerging, innovative health technologies and the so-called Internet of Everything (IoE).
The partnership promises the development of streamlined, Internet-enabled health informatics, which has applications such as personalised monitors and hand-held clinical devices, point-of-care testing and remotely managed health diagnostics
Flinders and Cisco have established a ‘Cisco Academy’ at Tonsley, which will deliver a curriculum to train students for the jobs of the future enabled by IoE – which has been described by Cisco as “the intelligent connection of people, processes, data and things to the Internet”.
Professor Richard Constantine, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Information Services) at Flinders, said the University had undergone a major technological renewal with Cisco and now has the infrastructure in place to assist new research.
“Our researchers can investigate ways to use technology to create new devices that will have a major impact on how we look after ourselves in the years to come. Having Cisco on board as a global leader in IoE will give us the capacity to do more of this work and do it more quickly,” Professor Constantine said.
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