New era of commercialisation at UTAS

The University of Tasmania has signed an agreement with UniQuest Pty Limited to collaborate with UniQuest on commercialisation activities arising from UTAS research and technologies.

The UTAS  Research Office Commercialisation Unit and UniQuest will to work together to identify and develop innovative research with commercial potential, utilising UniQuest’s extensive technical resources and links with industry.

UniQuest is The University of Queensland’s main commercialisation company, based at St Lucia in Brisbane. It is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading technology transfer companies. The company specialises in adding value to the outcomes of research at an early stage and was established in 1984 to foster links between emerging technologies developed by university researchers and the financial and entrepreneurial resources of industry and business.

Over the past 25 years UniQuest has built, commercialised and managed an extensive intellectual property and asset portfolio, including more than 1500 patents and over 60 companies resulting from university-based discoveries and expertise. UniQuest and its start-ups have raised a quarter of a billion dollars to take technologies to market since 2000. Global sales of products based in UQ technology and licensed by UniQuest are now in excess of $5.2 billion per year. With 80+ staff and group revenues over $100M in 2008, UniQuest’s capabilities benchmark it in the top 10% globally for university-based commercialisation and technology transfer.

In recent years, UniQuest has signed commercialisation collaborations with the University of Wollongong; the Mater Medical Research Institute; James Cook University; the University of Technology, Sydney; and two ARC Centres of Excellence.  UniQuest is excited about adding UTAS to its growing family of research and innovation partners.

Associating with UniQuest presents researchers with the opportunity to take their ideas to a global market and have a positive impact on meeting the needs of people worldwide, with the potential to develop a supplementary revenue stream for advancing their research interests. Some of the activities UniQuest will host to support researcher engagement with commercialisation processes include workshops (intellectual property issues, licensing deals, start-up/spin-off companies, industry funding opportunities,etc), innovative ideas competitions, industry networking events, and one-on-one advice and support.

UniQuest has appointed a UTAS-based Manager of Innovation and Commercial Development (MICD), with another MICD to start soon at UTAS. UniQuest MICDs are technically qualified individuals with experience in both research and commercial environments. They work with university researchers to develop the commercial potential of innovations and research, organising  protection of intellectual property where appropriate, and utilising UniQuest’s technical resources to deliver commercialisation outcomes in association with the inventors.

Dr Robin Fieldhouse is the first MICD to be based at UTAS. Before moving to Hobart, Robin was responsible for business development and leading R&D projects at Agritechnology in Orange, NSW, a private R&D technology generation and commercialisation company, focused on industrial microbiology, fermentation, food science and process engineering. Previously, he has worked for Route Selection Chemistry at NPIL Pharma in UK (formerly Avecia Pharmaceuticals, Zeneca Specialities) and Syngenta, also in the UK. Robin has a D. Phil and a BA Hons (Chemistry, 1st Class), both from Oxford University.

Robin can be contacted at Robin.Fieldhouse@utas.edu.au, 03 6226 6299 or 0420 749 535.