Welcome to the first update of 2021. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and are excited for the year ahead.
Universities across Australia are home to researchers and infrastructure that in many cases could help industry address complex challenges. A key aspect of harnessing this capability is ensuring that industry is able to connect with university researchers, and where appropriate, the infrastructure/equipment used by those researchers. For CEAT, linking industry with researchers has been achieved through having start-ups join the Innovation Hub located in the Gould Building on Daley Road. However, for some start-ups, the ideal location may not necessarily be in the Hub, but elsewhere across the ANU-CSIRO Precinct. As an example, this month the Research School of Chemistry formed a R&D collaboration with Dr James Petrie and his team at Nourish Ingredients. Nourish Ingredients is an alternative food company focusing on the development of animal-free fats that are healthier and taste better than plant fats like coconut and palm. The collaboration is a meeting of minds and an opportunity for the School to use its world-leading infrastructure to help develop products needed by the foods industry. CEAT looks forward to supporting James and his team. We also look forward to helping other industry entities forge links with researchers across the ANU-CSIRO Precinct.
To help us prepare for the coming year, the CEAT team started the year with a two-day strategic planning workshop, which was brilliantly led by Denise Higgins, our Senior Manager responsible for Strategic Planning and Evaluation. The workshop provided an opportunity for CEAT to think about our past and present, and where we want to be in the future. With CEAT’s elevation to an ANU Innovation Institute, it is important that we think carefully about our goals and objectives, and ways we can resource our four key areas of activity, which are centred around the Innovation Hub, Research Translation, Innovation Training and Management & Evaluation initiatives. The workshop was a great opportunity for the CEAT team to work together to map out future activities and investments. In the coming months, you will see examples of those activities advertised on our website and in our monthly newsletter
Wishing our readers all the best for 2021.
Thank you.
Owen Atkin, Director, CEAT.