The CEAT team are working with the Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA) as part of a program to help them with their transformation to an innovation culture, and advancing their commercialisation agenda.
The Vietnam National University of Agriculture (VNUA), located in Hanoi in the country’s north, aims to be one of the leading universities in education and research in the areas of agriculture and rural development in Vietnam and has an ambitious strategy to realise this goal. Agriculture plays an important part of the Vietnamese economy, especially in terms of employment in rural areas, and the government are keen to leverage the agtech revolution and rise of digitisation in order to build gains in the sector.
In 2017 Australia and Vietnam announced the Australia-Vietnam Innovation Partnership, with DFAT funding $10 million for the Aus4Innovation program. The program aims to help Vietnam strengthen its innovation ecosystem, prepare for and embrace opportunities, and shape its innovation agenda in science and technology. The Resilient Agriculture and Food (RAF) Initiative is part of the program, and support was given to VNUA through this initiative to develop their Centre for Ag Innovation (CAI) advance the university’s commercialisation agenda.
CEAT have been subcontracted by CSIRO to provide information and advice, and help to co-design a pathway with VNUA for their journey in building a vibrant innovation ecosystem and encouraging commercialisation activities within the university. CEAT, as an ANU innovation institute specialising in agriculture with the access to leveraging the University’s multidisciplinary capability, is perfectly placed to assist. It is also a great opportunity to build the relationship with another international university to share knowledge and learn from each other’s research, and find research overlaps for opportunities together.
CEAT are delivering a series of four workshops as part of this program of work, with two workshops held virtually and two delivered in-person in Vietnam.
The initial workshop was held online at the end of last year to initiate the co-design process, working with VNUA on the goals and objectives of the program.
The second workshop was held online last Friday, and looked at three case studies – three from ANU and one from VNUA – to provide examples of different parts of the innovation ecosystem which can help the road to commercialisation.
The ANU Office of Business Engagement and Commercialisation (BEC) gave a presentation of their model of University support, followed by a case study looking at government organisations like the NSW Smart Sensing Network, and how it can support collaboration across different institutes. CEAT gave a presentation on their journey as an agriculture-specific institute, and Dr Long from the VNUA CAI helped to provide the VNUA and Vietnamese context.
The final two workshops will be delivered in person at VNUA in early March and will delve into a deeper analysis of the VNUA landscape and context, before looking at the desired long-term impact and developing the short and medium term steps that need to be in place to get there.
Keep an eye out in the next newsletter for further news on this partnership.