Investor Updates
Australia opens $175m research centre
1 August 2013
Australia has opened a $175 million research hub which will join more than 400 researchers in four key disciplines in a move that bolsters the nation’s reputation for world-class innovation and collaboration between Government and academia.
Research teams at the New Horizons Centre will address challenges to manufacturing, modelling and simulation, biological engineering and renewable energy. The teams will be made up of university researchers and experts from Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Innovation Minister Kim Carr said the centre was a vital piece of research infrastructure for Australia.
"This centre represents a new approach – bringing university and CSIRO researchers together on a global scale to work in large teams on both blue-sky and applied research," Senator Carr said.
"These research teams are working at the very edge of discovery and will break new ground with their findings. We will see rapid product development, new forms of drug delivery, new materials, micro-engineered robots. The possibilities are endless," he said.
Built with $90 million from Government, the centre is the head office for the Manufacturing Innovation Precinct at Monash University in Melbourne, which directly links advanced manufacturing research to industry.
The Manufacturing Precinct is part of the Government's Industry Innovation Precinct initiative, a major focus of the Government's $1 billion Industry and Innovation Statement, unveiled earlier this year.
Since 2008, the Australian Government has invested more than $2.1 billion in national, collaborative research infrastructure, mostly under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. It announced a further $185.9 million from 1 July 2013 to 30 June 2015.
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