new class
Australian ingenuity making a mark on the world stage. Page 18
ENVIRONMENT
The $250 billion boom in agriculture. Page 14
A targeted approach for wellbeing in remote communities. Page 26 SOCIETY
Vast challenges
INNOVATION
Fuel injection
Advanced manufacturing driving industry forward. Page 23
BIG PICTURE
Eye on the prize
Revolutionising vision correction as we age. Page 28
THE AUSTRALIA ISSUE LEADERS IN SCIENCE
How the unsung heroes of Australian R&D are driving profits, innovation and collaboration at home and overseas
Partnering with industry is a key growth area for science, says the Minister for Industry, the Hon Ian Macfarlane
Leaders in science from academia and industry involved in Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) programs gathered at UNSW Australia –a partner in more than a dozen CRCs – for this special edition of KnowHow focusing on science in the service of the nation.
SCIENCE IS AT the heart of Australia’s economy and society. It is essential to improving our lives – it benefits our communities and boosts our standard of living.
Science is in the Industry portfolio with good reason. By drawing science and business closer together we can help bring the brilliant, world-leading research that is taking place in our public research institutions out of the lab and into the world.
The government understands this. That’s why the Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda recognises science as essential to lifting Australia’s rate of business and research
collaboration in order to deliver commercial outcomes, economic growth and productivity gains.
We need to keep our focus on creating powerful connections between industry and researchers. Our $484 million investment in
The Federal Government’s $476 million investment in the Industry Skills Fund, commencing January 2015, will create the highly-skilled workforce that Australia needs to adapt to new business growth opportunities.
“We need to keep our focus on creating powerful connections between industry and researchers.”
the Entrepreneurs’ Infrastructure Programme includes access to advisors who can link businesses to appropriate research institutions, and matches funding to bring research capability into the business for specific projects.
From left
Dr Andrew Beehag
General Manager CRC for Advanced Composite Structures (CRC-ACS) – page 23
Professor Stephen Foster Head of School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Australia Low Carbon Living CRC – page 12
Professor Murray Norris Deputy Director, Children’s Cancer Institute Australia Cancer Therapeutics CRC – page 8
Professor Farzad Safaei Director, ICT Research Institute, University of Wollongong Smart Services CRC – page 9
Professor Valerie Linton Chief Executive Officer Energy Pipelines CRC – page 11
Associate Professor Padmaja Sankaridurg Program Leader, Myopia Control, Brien Holden Vision Institute Vision CRC – page 28
Dr Vito Mollica Head of Marketing and Communications Capital Markets CRC – page 18
Jessica Sullivan Client Business Innovation Leader, Graeme Booker Operations Leader, iSee VC Pty Ltd Smart Services CRC – page 9
By making better use of scientific knowledge in Australian industry, we can generate sustainable economic growth and ultimately a higher standard of living for the nation as a whole.
Curtin University’s partnerships with more than 90 institutions worldwide mean the university has established a strong presence in South-East Asia. In addition to our flagship campus in Perth, Western Australia, we have campuses in Singapore, Sarawak and Sydney, which consolidate our international presence.
www.curtin.edu.au
At CSIRO, we shape the future. We do this by using science to solve real issues. Our research makes a difference to industry, people and the planet. We ask, we seek, we solve. We are CSIRO. www.csiro.au
TECHNOLOGY
11 Pipeline design for a safer future
The Energy Pipelines CRC is working to prevent a pipeline disaster ever occurring in Australia.
14 Fields of glory
New technologies at the frontier of Australia’s agricultural boom are set to secure our place as a strong global competitor.
SPECIAL REPORT
18 The new class
Australian innovation is making an impact on the world stage as businesses and researchers forge ahead into foreign markets.
SPOTLIGHT: ANSTO
22 Going global
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s nuclear medicine program supplies products for the treatment of one in two Australians and many more people worldwide.
INNOVATION
23 Boom time: the new, smart manufacturing
Job stats are low but hopes are high for Australia’s beleaguered manufacturing sector to transition into a high-tech, world-class, niche market operator.
SOCIETY
26 The wider view
The 3% of Australians living in remote regions face significant health and social challenges. Two CRCs are finding solutions.
IN THE NEWS
5 Smart sole support for diabetic feet
6 Antarctic robots trawl for climate data
7 Using polymer cell technology for cheap renewable energy
8 Targeting kids’ cancer, gene by gene
9 iSee: Education’s future
10 Rabbits’ viral expansion
GROWTH FACTOR
12 Fresh opportunities
The Low Carbon Living CRC’s ambitious goal is to drive Australia’s carbon emissions down by 10 megatonnes by 2020.
BIG PICTURE
28 Eye for detail
It’s long been accepted that vision declines with age, but an Australian invention could soon change this.
THE NEXT BIG THING
30 The spirit within Fairer regulation and better access to finance and equity will give entrepreneurs plenty of encouragement.
Experts from the Wound Management Innovation CRC, based at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, said a shoe insole that communicates with the wearer’s phone could prevent foot injuries among diabetics.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases globally, with the number of people living with diabetes worldwide set to grow from 382 million in 2013 to 592 million by 2035, according to Diabetes Australia. Poor blood glucose control among diabetics can cause nerve damage to feet and inhibit blood supply. This results in an absence of sensation in the feet, which can lead to serious foot injury.
The CRC is about to start a patient trial of an insole made using pressure-sensing fabric that sends a message to a smartphone warning of potential damage to a diabetic’s feet.
The pressure-sensitive fabric was originally developed at RMIT University for elite athletes. It has since been fine-tuned in consultation with experts in podiatry from Southern Cross University. Electronics in the insole will pick up changes in the distribution of pressure applied in each step, which are indicative of a wearer subconsciously favouring a foot or part of a foot. The electronics will then communicate wirelessly to the wearer’s smartphone at the point where the patient is at risk of foot damage.
Diabetics are prone to minor breaks in the skin of the foot, which can lead to ulcers. Patients with a history of these ulcers have a high risk of the problem
recurring, so the trial will initially determine if the technology can reduce the recurrence of skin breaks. An ulcer on the bottom of the foot can develop into an injury that penetrates to the bone and can cause chronic infections, open sores and eventually result in amputation.
CRC Chief Executive Officer Dr Ian Griffiths said the technology had the potential to reduce the incidence of ulcer recurrence among people living
with diabetes, saving them from severe pain, possible amputation and incapacity.
“Diabetics have to be very careful of foot injuries. An injury can cause months of pain and anguish. It can keep diabetics off their feet and stop them going to work, doing the shopping –generally leading a normal life.”
The CRC initiative involves QUT, Southern Cross University, RMIT and its industrial partner Smith & Nephew as an advisor. www.woundcrc .com
The CRC, funded until July 2018, is working with similar organisations in Canada and Wales to leverage strengths in scientific and clinical research and education through an International Wound Management Research Collaboration. The project will focus on a postgraduate student exchange program and establish the International Registry of Wounds.
Surveys by an unmanned submarine support suggestions that Antarctic sea ice is thicker than previously thought, according to research accepted by Nature Geoscience
The data was collected by an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) deployed during a two-month exploration in late 2012 as part of an international collaboration between polar scientists, including the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (ACE CRC). It’s hoped the work will help explain the ‘paradox’ of Antarctic sea ice extent, which has grown slightly during the past 30 years. This is in stark contrast to Arctic sea ice, which has shown a major decline.
The research, led by ARC Future Fellow Dr Guy Williams, provides the most complete picture yet of Antarctic sea ice thickness and structure.
Previously, measurements were made via drill holes in the ice and supplemented by visual observations made from icebreakers as they crashed and ploughed through the sea ice zone, said Williams.
In contrast, the AUV gathers information by travelling beneath the ice, producing 3D maps of the underside of the ice based on data captured by a multi-beam sonar instrument. Complex imagery of an area the size of several football fields can be compiled in just six hours.
The manual drill estimates of thickness have never exceeded 5–6 m, but the AUV regularly returned thicknesses over 10 m and up to 16 m.
“This sort of thick ice would simply never be sampled by drilling or observations from ships,” said Williams. “We measured the thickness
of 10 double football fields, and found that our traditional method [manual drill lines] would have underestimated the volume by over 20%.”
The researchers can’t yet say that overall Antarctic sea ice thickness is underestimated by this amount. They’ll need to use the AUV over much longer scales –across distances of 1000 km, for example – and directly compare the results with those from traditional methods.
The AUV is one of two new innovative information sources being used by ACE CRC scientists to explore Antarctic sea ice processes and change. They’ve also begun tapping into environmental data gathered in the Southern Ocean by elephant seals. These marine mammals can dive deeper than 1500 m and travel thousands of kilometres in a season.
During the past decade, ecologists and biologists have been equipping them with specialised oceanographic equipment provided by Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System, to observe where and when they forage.
“These seals had been going to places we could only dream of going with a ship,” said Williams. The first major breakthrough from the seal-gathered data came last year with the confirmation of a new source of Antarctic bottom water, the cold dense water mass created by intense sea ice growth that ultimately influences climate worldwide.
It’s the fourth source to be identified of this influential water mass, and scientists had been looking for it for more than 30 years. – Karen McGhee
www.acecrc.org.au
We can expect to be manufacturing and exporting cheap, lightweight solar cells (electrical devices that convert light energy into electricity) to the rest of the world by 2019, taking renewable energy to remote and off-grid communities such as emergency refugee camps.
This prediction came from Professor David Officer, head of the polymer solar cell program at the CRC for Polymers (CRC-P), which is developing design and manufacturing processes for commercially viable polymer solar cells based on a light-sensitive dye.
Officer described the cells as a “people’s technology” for the future. His optimism is based on patents recently secured by the CRC-P for components that will provide a competitive edge over other consortia developing similar cells. CEO Dr Ian Dagley said CRC-P researchers have also pioneered new cost-effective manufacturing techniques that, for commercial reasons, currently remain secret.
Polymer cells exploit the same photovoltaic principle as silicon- and glass-based rooftop solar panels. Unlike those bulky panels, however,
for Australian manufacturing. Officer estimated that, using methods developed by the CRC-P, polymer cells can be produced that cost no more than 50 cents per watt – that’s less than half the price to which the silicon solar cell industry aspires.
Dye-sensitised solar cells first created much excitement when they were invented 23 years ago, but have failed to deliver commercially on their early promise. So far, only one company – Wales-based G24 Power – is manufacturing the cells, and only on a small scale.
A key obstacle has been the cost of materials. “We’ve been trying to develop a cost-effective solution to producing the solar cells using inexpensive materials, some of which we’ve made ourselves and can scale up quite easily,” explained Dagley.
The CRC has achieved its materials and fabrication advances through a collaboration of expertise across five partner institutions: the University of Wollongong – where Officer developed new techniques that synthesise cheap organic dyes – the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Universities of Newcastle, Queensland and NSW.
polymer cells are flexible and lightweight and, as a result, can be incorporated onto a wide range of surfaces – from walls to sunshades. Transparent versions can even be used in windows. They can also operate indoors, enabling electricity recycling.
Crucially, however, polymer cells are considerably cheaper to manufacture. Silicon cells, for example, require expensive equipment and carefully controlled conditions, while the polymer product can be produced in minutes with minimal labour using reel-to-reel printers, presenting new opportunities
The CRC-P is investigating opportunities with sufficiently large markets to make manufacturing the cells cost-effective, which Officer said has been another obstacle to commercialisation. One contender is in horticulture, where transparent cells incorporated into greenhouses could power cooling and water pumps. The cells may even be able to promote plant growth by transmitting only beneficial wavelengths of light.
– Jude Dineley
www.crcp.com.au
Cancer researchers in Australia are using a revolutionary ‘personalised medicine’ approach to identify effective individualised treatment options for children.
The personalised medicine platform, which is being developed and applied with the support of the Cancer Therapeutics CRC, will tailor each child’s cancer treatment to the particular genetics of their individual tumour.
Then, using a combination of in vitro cell growth and testing on mice, treatment will be determined by the response in the laboratory of their own cancer cells to drugs.
The project, led by Professor Michelle Haber, Executive Director of Australia’s Children’s Cancer Institute, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health in the USA, has been kickstarted with approximately $7.5 million in funding from the CRC budget.
“Although the survival rate of children’s cancer is now about 80%, this still means that on average about three kids in Australia are dying [from the disease] every week,” said Haber, who won the 2014 NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Research.
She said it was clear that individualised treatment is needed. “Two children can have the same diagnosis, but the standard treatment regimen will work for one child and fail with the other,” she explained.
The first step in the new approach is to take cells from a child’s tumour and run them through a set of molecular profiling tests, which reveal the genetic make-up of the cancer.
Haber’s team will soon settle on a panel of about 80 treatable genetic abnormalities for their targeted molecular profiling tests.
“We’ve trawled through the entire literature, pulling out what is known about genes that may be suitable for molecular targeted drug treatment,” she said. “This hasn’t been done for paediatric cancer before.”
The next step is to grow the child’s tumour cells. This is done either in laboratory flasks or in mice with deficient immune systems, known as ‘avatar mice’.
By rapidly scanning the cells, the researchers can test many drugs, either alone or in combinations, to see whether they knock back the cancer. And they don’t just try cancer drugs. Haber said that drugs as disparate as beta-blockers used in heart disease, as well as malaria drugs, can have anti-cancer effects.
Once a drug is shown to work in vitro, the next step is to use it in the avatar mice.
“We have been very excited by the excellent responses of the
first patients to have their therapy modified by their treating clinicians, on the basis of information being generated from this new personalised medicine platform,” said Haber.
Clinical trials of the platform, to be spearheaded by Sydney Children’s Hospital, are scheduled for 2017. However, Haber hopes it will be sooner than that.
“The CRC funding is invaluable,” she said. “It is paying for vital staff and their research supplies. Of course, this is just the beginning for the platform and we will only be able to handle a few patients at first.
“Our plan is that, eventually, the treatment platform will be offered to every child in the country who has a high-risk malignancy.”
– Clare Pain
Australian developers have begun to commercialise affordable new software that could revolutionise online education – as well as our interactions on the internet.
Known as iSee, the technology merges videoconferencing with interactive, virtual environments. It’s been built by University of Wollongong (UOW) researchers in partnership with the Smart Services CRC and now through the spin-off company, iSee VC. iSee operates by immersing dozens of users in a game-like setting where they appear as ‘mevatars’.
Like avatars in online gaming, ‘mevatars’ represent the user in a virtual space. However, while avatars are typically an alter ego or fantasy character, mevatars are created by streaming the user’s webcam into an immersive setting in real time, enabling authentic face-to-face interactions.
The technology can stream more than 50 webcams in a virtual space where users can move around, form groups, converse and share content. It employs point sensitive hearing, where multiple users occupying the space and engaging in multiple conversations will only hear what is within earshot – just as they would in the real world.
iSee is designed to mimic natural conversations and the real life act of mingling, explained Chief Technical Officer Professor Farzad Safaei, from UOW’s ICT Research Institute.
“You can have multiple, simultaneous conversations going on in the setting between different groups,” Safaei said. “Importantly, the user – not the system – chooses who to focus on. From an education and training perspective, this makes it easier for students to interact with their peers, which is one of the key elements missing from online education tools.”
The NSW Department of Education and Communities is already trialling the iSee program to connect secondary students and teachers from a large metropolitan high school with staff and students from a small regional high school.
Colin Wood, who leads the department’s Virtual Learning Environment team, said the technology is helping students overcome regional isolation.
“It eliminates the need to travel long distances to experience natural social interaction and access specialist education, training and professional development,” he said. Wood agreed that a major benefit is that users can interact as they would in a physical space, such as a classroom.
Teachers have the ability, for example, to post slides and content on virtual whiteboards, break students into groups and then circulate, listen to the chat and provide feedback.
Meanwhile, students can meet, interact, share ideas and collaborate with each other.
Safaei said iSee requires at least 70% less bandwidth to operate than other videoconferencing systems. This is because to any given user, it only transmits the audio and video from people who are visible or within earshot inside the virtual setting.
“You could have 20–25 users in the environment, but one user on average is only downloading three to four videos,” he said.
Although commercialisation has been initially focused on education and training, iSee’s Client Business Innovation Leader Jessica Sullivan said the technology is set to have wide-ranging applications for organisations interested in humanising the web.
– Myles Gough
www.isee-meetings.com
The British colonies of the South Pacific called an inter-colonial commission in 1883 to consider matters of common interest. German and French intentions in the Pacific, quarantine and trade issues loomed large. So too did the rabbit, which less than 25 years after its introduction to Australia from Europe was considered “so serious a national evil” it could not be left “to the efforts of individuals for its remedy”.
Within five years, Henry Parkes had sponsored an international competition offering the astounding sum of £25,000 to fix the problem. This sparked an ongoing quest for biological controls for Australia’s number one vertebrate pest. Where Louis Pasteur and others had tried and failed, the CSIRO succeeded, twice, with new viral
controls: myxoma virus in the 1950s and rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV, also known as rabbit calicivirus) in the 1990s. Myxoma received a boost in the 1960s when a new carrier for the virus, the European rabbit flea, was introduced.
The Invasive Animals CRC (IA CRC) is hoping to mirror that success with a new program aimed at improving the impact of RHDV. “When we brought RHDV to Australia, only one strain, a Czech strain, was available to us,” said Dr Brian Cooke, from the IA CRC and the University of Canberra, who has spent his career battling rabbits using biological controls.
“We now understand that another strain – RCV-A1, which doesn’t cause the disease – was already here. This immunises some rabbits, which is why RHDV
was less effective in wetter, higher production areas where it is more prevalent. In arid Australia, generally without RCV-A1, around 85% of rabbits died.”
Under the RHD-Boost Program, the IA CRC searched the world for more effective RHDV strains, eventually importing and screening 38 naturally varying strains. After additional tests, six were further investigated, and two virus strains – both from South Korea – demonstrated advantages over the existing Czech strain. One also showed an ability to overcome the partial protection from the problematic RCV-A1 calicivirus.
CEO of the CRC, Andreas Glanznig, said the discovery is encouraging but there are more steps to take before a new RHDV strain can be released.
“Myxoma and RHDV are the only two examples of wide-scale viral biocontrol for vertebrate animals – ever.”
The rewards are “potentially huge”, he said. “These two viruses have so far delivered more than $70 billion in value to Australia and prevented untold environmental damage.” Myxoma still kills about half the rabbits born in Australia today, at zero cost.
With rabbit numbers on the rise, Australia needs to stay on the front foot. “It is imperative that we have a pipeline of new RHDV strains to keep rabbit biocontrol effective. The alternative will undo decades of management of Australia’s most costly vertebrate pest,” said Glanznig. – Tony Peacock
www.invasiveanimals.com
The Energy Pipelines CRC is working to prevent a pipeline disaster ever occurring in Australia, Clare Pain reports.
JUST AFTER 6PM on 9 September 2010, a massive explosion rocked the Californian suburb of San Bruno. Within seconds, a house was engulfed in flames. More homes were soon burning ferociously.
The cause was unknown for almost an hour. Some residents thought a plane had crashed at nearby San Francisco Airport. Others believed there had been an earthquake, as San Bruno lies close to the San Andreas Fault.
In fact, a 76 cm gas transmission pipeline had ruptured, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
“We’ve got a safety record better than any other country for our operation of energy pipelines.”
Professor Valerie Linton, CEO of the Energy Pipelines CRC (EPCRC), has a mission to make sure such a pipeline disaster never happens in Australia.
“We’ve got a safety record at least an order of magnitude better than any other country in terms of our operation of energy pipelines. And we want to make sure it stays that way,” she says. “There’s always a risk that somebody gets overly enthusiastic with a digger and makes a hole or fracture in a pipeline. In the worst case, the fracture ‘unzips’ along the pipe. Our researchers have been working to ‘design
out’ the possibility of fractures occurring, and that work has been exceptional.”
The EPCRC is a collaboration between four universities, the Australian Government and members of the Australian Pipeline Industry Association. One particularly significant product of its research is the recently released computer software called EPDECOM, which Linton describes as a leader in its field. Pipeline designers can use the software to determine the steel properties needed to enable the pipeline to withstand damage.
“North American fracture control experts have independently assessed EPDECOM, and it performs better than any other software available,” says Linton.
The CRC is also helping to improve Australian Standard AS2885 that applies to the pipeline industry. This relates to the design, construction, testing, operations and maintenance of gas and petroleum pipelines that operate at pressures above 1050 kPa.
“One of the most direct ways we can influence pipeline safety is to make sure our research findings get incorporated into upgrades of AS2885,” explains Linton.
An independent testing and research laboratory specialising in pipeline coatings opened in March 2104 at Deakin University – a CRC partner. Testing the integrity of pipeline coatings is vital if pipes are to be protected from corrosion.
While much of the EPCRC’s work is in engineering, social science also plays a central role. Dr Jan Hayes, Program Leader for Public Safety and Security of Supply, says inquiries into most accidents do not reveal new types of equipment
failure. Usually the technological issues are already understood, but the knowledge isn’t applied because of social issues within organisations.
One of Hayes’ key goals is to harness the learning from pipeline incidents around the world. Hayes has co-authored a book: Nightmare Pipeline Failures: Fantasy Planning, Black Swans And Integrity Management. Its intended audience is senior executives in energy and chemical companies, but it will be publicly available and Linton describes it as “very readable”. The CRC funded Hayes’ research on the San Bruno disaster, which is included in the book. It’s another step towards keeping Australian energy
www.epcrc.com.au
safe.
The Low Carbon Living CRC’s ambitious goal is to drive Australia’s carbon emissions down by 10 megatonnes by 2020, Gemma Chilton reports.
THE WAY WE design, build and manage our urban spaces is undergoing a transformation that’s almost unprecedented in scope. We’re reimagining our cities and urban precincts in the face of changing climate, energy and security issues and a growing appreciation for sustainability principles. Individuals and organisations from a broad range of disciplines will need to play a role.
Dr Deo Prasad, the CEO of the CRC for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) and a Professor of Sustainable Development at the UNSW Faculty of Built Environment, personifies this multidisciplinary approach. Originally trained as an architect, Prasad obtained a master’s degree in science and program management and completed a PhD in thermal heat transfer in buildings.
The CRCLCL is a $48 million centre, announced in November 2011, of which the Commonwealth contribution is $28 million over seven years. The centre brings together property developers, planners, engineers and policy organisations with Australian researchers with an overarching aim of reducing carbon emissions by 10 megatonnes in the next five years – the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road each year. The CRCLCL research will bring about $680 million worth of benefits to the Australian economy over 15 years.
“Our focus is on enabling Australian industries and particularly small to medium enterprises to benefit from the new products, technologies, tools and systems. We’re trying to ensure the built environment sector can capture the benefits from going low carbon,” says Prasad.
“Our focus is on enabling industries to benefit from new technologies – and that the built environment sector can capture the benefits from going low carbon.”
Malay Dave, a PhD candidate at the CRCLCL and UNSW Australia Built Environment, is researching sustainable prefabricated or modular housing, with an end goal of developing a framework for “whole-systems design”. This approach considers the house as an energy system with interdependent parts, each of which affects the performance of the entire system.
“The need for housing that is both sustainable and affordable is a major issue globally,” he says. “Prefabrication, or off-site construction, offers huge opportunities in delivering environmental sustainability and economic affordability in buildings.”
Dave has a $95,000 scholarship funded by the CRC, which offers $30,000 per year stipends with a total of 88 scholarships available for the current funding period of seven years.
The CRCLCL is also working in parallel with the CRC for Polymers (CRC-P) to coat building cladding materials such as steel or glass with the next generation of solar cells – enabling light energy capture and distribution throughout a building.
Researchers at the CRC-P are in the process of developing these advanced materials for the next generation of solar cells for which the CRCLCL is investigating large-scale commercial applications (see page 7).
CEO Dr Ian Dagley says the CRC-P has a philosophy of putting postgraduate students on the most groundbreaking projects. “We want them to be doing work of high academic interest using state-of-the-art materials and techniques so they can publish in high-profile international journals,” he says. With two-and-a-half years of funding remaining, the CRC-P has filled all its 11 postgrad scholarships to the value of $1,060,000.
Other projects at the CRCLCL include researching innovative building materials such as concrete with reduced embodied carbon. They are also developing tools and collating data to measure the impact of urban developments in terms of water, waste, energy and materials.
The CRCLCL also collaborates with the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities for this, “developing design ‘charrettes’ [intense design workshops] to ensure development goals for water and carbon aspirations are well-established,” explains Prasad.
The third main CRCLCL research program involves community engagement. “Technology or design in itself won’t fix the problem,” says Prasad. “We need to look at what resonates with communities – why they take up certain initiatives and not others.”
www.lowcarbonlivingcrc.com.au
www.crcp.com.au
www.watersensitivecities.org.au
Research Fellow, Monash University Water for Liveability Centre and CRC for Water Sensitive Cities
WITH BACHELOR DEGREES in civil engineering and science and a PhD in environmental sociology, Dr Briony Rogers is uniquely placed for her present research role. She’s tackling the technical and social challenges required to make our urban water systems more sustainable and resilient to the impacts of climate change, a growing population and increasing urbanisation.
FOR RESEARCHER Jane Kelley, helping an individual farmer is just as rewarding as knowing that she is helping the entire dairy industry overcome one of its biggest threats to milk productivity – a parasite called liver fluke.
“When I finish my lab work, I can email the vet to inform them that they need to treat now,” she says. “The end product for the farmer will be healthier stock, which is important from a welfare perspective and also for increased productivity for the farmer.”
Kelley, who grew up in Gippsland, Victoria, was the recipient of the Dairy Australia Award at the 2014 Science and Innovation Awards for Young
As a civil engineer, Rogers spent five years working for private infrastructure services consultancy GHD where she was responsible for civil engineering design and project management on a range of water infrastructure projects both in Australia and Vietnam. She was passionate about sustainability, but recalls that by the time designs landed on her desk, most of the big decisions influencing sustainability and resilience had already been made.
Rogers decided to take on doctoral research at Monash University and investigate processes of social change in relation to sustainable infrastructure and technology. “I drew on my technical understanding, but with the recognition that to implement new approaches, social systems would have to change as well,” she says.
Now, as a Research Fellow for the Monash University Water for Liveability Centre and the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Rogers works with key stakeholders to design strategies and new methods to build the “social capital” required to transform the way we plan, design and manage our urban water systems. Rogers’ interdisciplinary background means she can act as a bridge between various stakeholders, from engineers and ecologists to landscape architects, as well as organisations such as local councils, state government departments and private enterprise.
The big picture goal, Rogers says, is to transition to “water sensitive cities”, in which decentralised, low energy technologies are integrated with centralised networks to build resilience in the face of an unpredictable future. This requires thinking outside the square, she adds, and recognising that water infrastructure “is not just a pipe underground”, but a valuable part of the urban landscape, providing benefits that can enhance the liveability of a city. She gives an example of green cities that are irrigated using harvested stormwater to reduce extreme heat during heatwaves.
“We’ve been building our water systems in large-scale, centralised modes for a couple of hundred years, so it is very difficult to change our approach,” Rogers says. “That’s partly why this type of research is so important – to understand what is locking us into traditional systems, so we can overcome those barriers to support innovation not just in rhetoric, but in practice.”
Rogers was this year selected by the International Social Science Council to be one of 20 early-career World Social Science Fellows in the area of sustainable urbanisation. – Gemma Chilton
People in Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. The award came with a grant that has enabled her to use a cutting-edge diagnostic technique to investigate the prevalence and burden of liver fluke on Victorian dairy farms. This is the first time the new technique – developed in 2004 by a group of Spanish scientists – has been used in large-scale field trials in naturally infected cattle.
The liver fluke parasite currently costs the Australian livestock industry $60–90 million every year. Kelley hopes her undergraduate research, which she is now continuing as a PhD student, will help generate improved methods for managing the parasite to a point at which the impact on milk production and animal welfare is minimal.
Gemma Chilton
–
New technologies at the frontier of Australia’s agricultural boom are set to secure our place as a strong global competitor, Rosslyn Beeby reports.
to add $250 billion to Australia’s economy over the next two decades, according to a 2014 report by global consultancy Deloitte, agriculture has been deemed one of our five “super growth sectors”
The Deloitte report, the final in its Building the Lucky Country series on future prosperity, says agriculture could be “as big as mining” for Australia, thanks to a combination of factors that include an increase in global population, rising food demand, food security issues and the changing dietary demands of Asia’s growing middle class in countries like China, India and Indonesia.
“Essentially, we have what the world wants and will increasingly need over the next 20 years,” says Rob McConnel, Deloitte’s Agribusiness National Leader.
“The global opportunity becomes obvious when you see the numbers, and the numbers are compelling. The world’s population is around 7 billion and this is forecast to increase to 9 billion by 2050, which is a 28% increase.”
The world will need to increase global food production by around 75% and Australian agribusiness “has the goods” to be a major player in meeting this demand, he says. But our challenges include investing more in research and development, improving tertiary education courses to produce more agribusiness
and food science graduates, and “having a mature conversation” about foreign investment in agribusiness assets.
Also in 2014, economic consultants McKinsey & Company published a report on actions needed to build Australia’s international competitiveness across all sectors of the economy. The report, Compete to Prosper – Improving Australia’s Global Competitiveness, concludes that only one economic sector – agriculture – “stands out as strongly competitive”, but warns that its future contribution to the national economy should not be taken for granted.
While Australia is well-positioned, geographically and economically, to gain access to new markets in Asia, this growth is not assured, the McKinsey report says. Australia faces a “pervasive competitiveness problem” and many sectors of its economy lag behind international benchmarks.
The report argues that disruptive technologies such as robotics and digital communications are redefining economies and global trade, with supply chains fragmenting and becoming more specialised. The report uses Apple’s iPod as an example of a high-demand product that contains 451 distinct components sourced from around the world.
This means the global flows of those components, or “intermediate goods”, are more than three times greater than
for the final product, and competition is moving from the level of industry sectors like manufacturing or retail to areas like design and logistics.
“Tools for file sharing and collaboration allow engineering plans to be drafted by teams in multiple countries; more sophisticated logistics allow construction firms to prefabricate everything from bathrooms in multi-storey dwellings to steel structures for liquefied natural gas processing plants,” the McKinsey report points out.
“Australia has a longstanding worldwide reputation for excellence in science related to food and agriculture. This is an area where Australia can show leadership.”
WHAT DOES THIS mean for Australian agriculture? Future farm research teams will include data analysts, software programmers, agronomists, statisticians, engineers, geneticists, cell biologists, hydrologists and atmospheric physicists. Farmers will use geo-location data to analyse climate, water tables and soils, and calculate inputs such as fertilisers and chemicals for weed and disease control. Farm robotics, from drone surveillance of livestock and crops to sophisticated digital systems that track soil moisture and farm water management, will be a major growth area.
The Australian Government has announced $100 million in new grants for rural industries research. At the Australasian Research Managers Society conference in Canberra in September 2014, the Department of Agriculture Senior Executive Richard Webb said “non-traditional areas” such as farm robotics will be funded by grants offered through Australia’s 15 Rural Research and Development Corporations. Australia is already a world leader in this area, Webb emphasised, adding that there was “plenty of scope” to work across industries and to adapt mining and defence robotic systems to farming.
Precision agriculture research, which involves the use of satellite mapping and remote sensors, is another area where Australia can lead. The Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney has developed a world-first robot sensor for vegetable farming –a solar-powered robot called Ladybird that will help farmers collect crop data, detect pests and control weeds.
The Plant Biosecurity CRC is working with researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) on the use of drones to detect diseases in wheat and other crops, as well as the spread of the myrtle rust fungus in Australia’s national parks. Sustainable grazing systems also have the potential to improve farm productivity and profitability, while
Australian agriculture at a glance
US$38.4 BILLION
$2.56
The amount earned for each dollar spent on the Plant Biosecurity CRC, based on typical pest impacts in key plant industries.
The export value of Australian agricultural products in 2012 – placed in the world’s top 15 in this sector.
The number of sheep producers who attended workshops on improving flock production of pregnant ewes in a program developed by the Sheep CRC.
$131 MILLION
The government and industry investment in the Plant Biosecurity CRC to identify early warning, identification and control of plant pests and diseases, safeguard trade and market access for grain and horticulture exports and improve national awareness of biosecurity issues facing Australia.
$14 BILLION
The value of Australia’s annual crop exports from industries that will benefit from Plant Biosecurity CRC research.
“We have what the world wants and will increasingly need over the next 20 years.”
making Australia’s farms more resilient to climate variability. The Future Farm Industries CRC recently ended its seven-year research program with a string of successes, including two Eureka national science awards for its use of native perennials and shrubs to create drought resistant pasture systems. These new pastures can improve nutrition for livestock and help control intestinal parasites in sheep, reducing drenching and chemical costs. Following trials by the CRC with farmers in WA and NSW, these systems are in use across more than 1 million hectares of farmland, and estimates suggest they could increase farm profitability by around $1.6 billion by 2030.
woody crops, such as oil mallees, to diversify farm income from new industries such as aviation biofuels. In 2013, it won a CRC Association national award for innovation excellence for a low-emissions mallee harvester (capable of continuous harvesting) developed with Richard Sulman, Principal Engineer in Australian consultancy Biosystems Engineering.
AUSTRALIA’S GLOBALLY competitive agronomists will also make greater use of genetics to improve crops and livestock. The Sheep CRC is using full genomic sequencing to improve the effectiveness of DNA tests used by wool and sheep meat producers when selecting breeding stock. The Dairy Futures CRC is involved in a global collaboration of more than 20 international participants led by Australian scientists to collect more than 1000 DNA sequences of bulls to identify gene mutations that cause embryonic death in dairy cattle (see page 20).
a review of Australia’s international agricultural research programs and found that when national investments in agricultural science, technology and training were taken into account, the number of people benefiting from Australian agricultural expertise was around 400 million a year.
“We are good at this,” he wrote in an introduction to the report. “Australia has a longstanding worldwide reputation for excellence in science related to food and agriculture. This is an area where Australia can show leadership.”
www.pbcrc.com.au
The Future Farm Industries CRC also explored the possibility of planting
Four years ago, Australia’s Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb led
www.sheepcrc.org.au
www.dairyfuturescrc.com.au
DATA ANALYTICS WILL become a thriving industry for Australia’s rural towns, providing skilled jobs and business opportunities for local graduates, says Senior Lecturer Dr Felipe Gonzalez from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
Working with the Plant Biosecurity CRC, Gonzalez is a partner in a $6.5 million international research program at QUT on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones to detect plant pests in crops. The project’s research partners also include Kansas State University and the Victorian Government’s Department of Environment and Primary Industries.
The three-year project is developing advanced software for thermal and multispectral imaging equipment in UAVs to detect the spread of pathogens. These include stripe rust in wheat, and myrtle rust, which is a threat to native plant crops such as tea-tree, eucalypt and callistemon.
In future farm management, drones could be commonly used as ‘farm scouts’ to patrol livestock, crops, weeds, feral animals and fences. In the process, they will collect so much information that a new breed of experts will be needed to process, collate and interpret the mass of data.
“We can see a future in which farmers would fly their own UAVs or hire a UAV contractor,” says Gonzalez.
“But the farmers won’t want all of the data that’s collected. They’ll only want what’s relevant to their decision-making, so they will rely on data analysts to prepare reports. The analysts will design and use machine learning programs and other artificial intelligence systems to sort, select and present information.”
Gonzalez has given talks to rural schools about the UAV project and says students are “really excited by the technology” and the possibilities of using a degree in data analytics to contribute to the family farm.
The UAVs could also be used for spraying and seeding crops, collecting air samples and surveying large areas of land, such as national parks, where helicopter surveillance would be difficult and costly. At the moment, the challenge is to make the use of UAVs a cost-effective way for farmers to detect crop diseases and pests for agricultural applications.
Designing and testing a UAV involves a complex mix of agriculture knowledge, as well as skills in software and programming languages to communicate instructions to the machine. Future design architectures will include fast response, real-time algorithms to map and vary flight paths, as well as light detection, terrain memory and ‘see and avoid’ technology to respond to other objects in the UAV’s airspace.
Gonzalez says the technology is already delivering good quality images, and several farm sectors are keenly interested in its future applications.
“We’re working on issues such as determining optimal flying distance from plants to get the best images, detection rates and data,” he says.
“This is not a technology that has a long way to go,” Gonzalez explains. “It’s already being used, and within the next two years we should see UAVs ready to play a bigger role in farm management.”
Advances in technology will transform the way farmers monitor, and eventually spray and seed, their crops.
Australian innovation is making an impact on the world stage as businesses and researchers forge ahead into foreign markets, says Penny Pryor
signs that Australian R&D investment in smart sectors such as finance and agriculture is reaping benefits overseas. Federal Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb points to a 10.4% rise in annual gross R&D expenditure to $31 billion (by 2012). This is twice the 4.9% per annum average among countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“Australia is a world-class innovation destination,” Robb says. “This is built on solid foundations of modern infrastructure, strong levels of investment, generous research and development incentives, and strong intellectual property protection.”
In the Global Innovation Index 2014, Australia achieved its highest rank for innovation inputs, coming in 10th out of 143 countries and placing 22nd for outputs.
“We have seen a near doubling of patents filed abroad by Australian entities over a 10-year period,” says Ben Mitra-Kahn, Chief Economist at IP Australia, the Federal Government’s intellectual property office. He believes this is an encouraging indication that organisations are taking their innovations to foreign markets.
“Our national scientific research organisation, CSIRO, ranks in the top 1% of the world’s scientific institutions
[in 15 of 22 research fields],” adds Robb. He cites Australia’s development of the bionic ear and CSIRO’s pioneering wi-fi work as high-profile examples of Australian innovation.
To that list, IP Australia adds ResMed’s patented sleep apnoea devices as well as Sportwool – a composite superfine Merino wool for endurance clothing, developed by CSIRO and WoolMark and adopted by foreign firms.
There’s also: the 3D-absorbent fabric developed by CSIRO and Textor Technologies, which is being used in the next generation nappy by global brand Huggies; Vision CRC’s ongoing work in contact lens technology worn by millions worldwide; and the Total Channel Control System to rejuvenate outdated irrigation systems. Total Channel Control is now used around the world, and was jointly developed by the former CRC for Sensor Signal and Information Processing, and Rubicon Water.
Relatively speaking, Australia’s weakness is innovation outputs. But efforts by many of the CRCs are building global relationships that will continue to boost the nation’s growth. In 2012, a report by Allen Consulting Group (now ACIL Allen Consulting) predicted that $5.9 billion in direct economic impacts would accrue during the five years to 2017 from CRC-produced technologies,
“We have seen a near doubling of patents filed abroad by Australian entities over a 10-year period.”
products and processes – on top of the $8.6 billion in direct impacts already accrued since the CRC Program began in 1991.
“No one is more interested in or committed to maximising research impact than CRCs,” says Tony Peacock, CEO of the CRC Association.
At its highest ranking to date, Australia is placed 17th in the overall Global Innovation Index – up six positions since 2012.
Australia’s innovation output/input ratio ranking leapt in one year from 116th to 81st out of 143 countries in 2014 – a step in the right direction.
process. These innovations also enable the data to be shared, with the result being a drastic reduction in research time.
AN EXAMPLE OF successful Australian innovation on a global stage is the European Capital Markets CRC (ECMCRC). Established in early 2013 by the Australian-based Capital Markets CRC (CMCRC) in collaboration with European universities, more than seven universities were involved at the time of writing, with plans for at least another seven by early 2015.
The CMCRC was born out of the Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia-Pacific (SIRCA), set up in
the 1990s by current CMCRC CEO Professor Michael Aitken as a model under which universities could collaborate and share knowledge and infrastructure and then jointly apply for research funding.
Like its Asia-Pacific predecessor, the CMCRC enables the finance and business departments of Australian universities to build and share valuable infrastructure.
A large amount of time in financial market research is spent collecting and collating data and the CMCRC has developed programs that expedite this
One of the CMCRC’s earliest and most successful innovations was the SMARTS market surveillance system, which was sold to the US stock exchange NASDAQ in 2010. The proceeds of that sale allowed further developments, such as the Market Quality Dashboard.
“The Market Quality Dashboard takes all that data and produces basic metrics that everyone needs to use to analyse things like transactions costs and market volatility,” Aitken explains. It means researchers and academics no longer need to develop these metrics from scratch, thereby improving productivity.
In Europe, the ECMCRC will attract new members by providing academics and universities with access to these tools.
“What we’re doing is encouraging the universities to get together – by giving them something they couldn’t hope to achieve in a million years – and once they’re together, we collectively apply for funding from the EU to be matched by industry funding, thus sharing the very successful CRC model with other countries,” Aitken says.
The university PhD students who use the data, and are in industry placements, have the joint role of linking the research to commercial applications because they best understand what companies need.
Aitken says the CMCRC has already built three major pieces of technology and created at least 200 new jobs in Australian spin-offs as a result.
“We hope that we will do the same in Europe but we need to get the universities together first,” he says.
“By focusing on industry engagement first and foremost, we will build interesting technology for businesses. This will build up ‘brownie points’ with industry partners who will provide access to their unique data, which will in turn foster scholarship.”
CMCRC’s predecessor, SIRCA, has 39 member universities from across the region, and Aitken says there are already plans in place for a capital markets research centre in North America in the next five years.
THE AREA OF agriculture and agribusiness is one of Australia’s five key strengths, points out Robb, and agricultural CRCs have also been very proactive when it comes to international cooperation. Two years ago, the Dairy Futures CRC launched a global research project to create the world’s biggest collection of DNA sequence data for dairy herd bulls.
The aim of the 1000 Bulls Genome Project was to build a database of DNA sequences to be used for breeding Australia’s dairy herds. From that data, mutations that affect animal health, welfare and productivity could also be identified.
A scientific paper analysing the genomes of 234 bulls from three dairy cattle breeds – Jersey, Holstein-Friesian and Fleckvieh – was published in the international journal Nature Genetics in July 2014. It explains that the research team identified 28.3 million genetic variants and was able to use the database to identify a recessive mutation linked to embryonic death in dairy cattle. The researchers also identified a dominant mutation linked to chondrodysplasia, a type of bone disease.
“There’s a real opportunity here if we can find the genes affecting traits that are important to dairy farmers, like fertility, milk production and disease resistance,” the project’s leader, Dr Ben Hayes, recently told the ABC’s Country Hour. “We’re combining the DNA information with the herd records that farmers have kept over a large number of years… to sort through those 28 million variants and come down to a few thousand that really do predict milk production, fertility and disease resistance.”
The project involves 20 international research partners from Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Denmark and the USA. Hayes is based at the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries and leads the Dairy Futures CRC’s animal improvement research program – a partnership between dairy farmers, pasture and cattle breeding companies, government and researchers.
Hayes explains that identifying a gene mutation that causes embryonic loss in cows can help farmers build a healthy, more productive dairy herd. “We know that this particular mutation is already present at low frequency in Australian
dairy herds. Locating the mutation means we can test for it and avoid matings between animals that both carry the mutation, to keep it from becoming a problem in the future.”
The CRC is also using the project’s genetic sequence data to design improvements in the routine use of DNA to predict the genetic merits of dairy cows.
“The ultimate challenge in making genomic selection more robust is to find the variants that are considered to be causative – the small fraction of all known variants that are responsible for major changes to the function of important genes,” Hayes says.
“We now have data for the entire DNA sequences, including mutations affecting the traits dairy farmers are most interested in. We are tracking down the causative genes for fertility, longevity and meat production, to equip farmers to make more informed breeding decisions and boost the quality of their herds.”
“By focusing on industry engagement we will build technology for businesses, gain access to unique data and foster scholarship.”
THE PORK CRC is another good example of global collaboration. The CRC has strong links with the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) on genetic research around disease resistance and environmental resilience in pigs. Pork CRC Chief Executive Officer, Dr Roger Campbell, credits the collaboration to the reputation and efforts of their geneticist Dr Susanne Hermesch, an Associate Professor at the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, based at the University of New England in NSW. Hermesch says international collaboration is particularly important in her field of pig genetics.
“It’s a small, very specialised field, and you really need to look for collaboration to get the people you want,” she says. Hermesch also has collaborative arrangements with researchers at organisations in New Zealand, Scotland and the Netherlands.
Pork CRC’s attitude towards commercialisation of research at a national level also means that any collaborative international research is quickly adopted in the field.
“Research is part of the adoption process,” says Hermesch. “We are recording information and data on farms in the commercial setting.”
Australian breeding companies collaborate in research, which means they must have faith that the research outcomes will result in commercial benefits for their business.
“This international collaboration is valuable,” adds Hermesch. “I’m pulling people from all over the world into my
extended research team with links to the Australian pig industry.”
Campbell expects there to be global advantages from the current genetic research because of these ties.
“The pig industry globally is not all that different,” he says. “I would expect that all geneticists, and therefore all breeding companies, are likely to benefit.”
www.cmcrc.com
www.dairyfuturescrc.com.au
www.visioncrc.org
www.porkcrc.com.au
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s nuclear medicine program supplies products for the treatment of one in two Australians and many more people worldwide, Clare Pain reports.
TOKYO. AN ANXIOUS 42-year-old woman faces breast cancer surgery tomorrow. She has just had a tiny amount of the radioactive element technetium-99m injected into her breast ahead of a scan that will tell her surgeon which lymph nodes to biopsy – thereby increasing the effectiveness of her operation.
She doesn’t know it, but her scan relied on ANSTO’s OPAL reactor in Sydney, which was designed for nuclear medicine and research. Radioactive molybdenum-99 (which decays to make technetium-99m), arrived at the airport just in time to get through customs and onto a Qantas flight to Tokyo.
On landing, it was rushed to a nuclear medicine processing company, where it was incorporated into a ‘generator’ – a heavily
a half-life of just six hours, which means half of it will have decayed into something else in that time. This is why it is shipped as its precursor, molybdenum-99, which has a half-life of 2.75 days.
ANSTO’s molybdenum-99 exports bring in over $10 million each year to Australia. This figure is set to triple after 2016, when its new $100 million nuclear medicine processing facility starts up, bringing with it 250 new jobs.
“This will allow us to provide about 25% of the global volume of molybdenum-99 and, with our joint venture South African partners NTP, supply about 50% of the world market,” Jenkinson says.
Most of the main reactors producing nuclear medicines are fuelled by highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the U-235
ANSTO’s molybdenum-99 exports bring in more than $10 million each year to Australia.
shielded device about the size of an esky – then couriered to the hospital, where the minute dose of technetium needed for her scan was drawn off.
ANSTO has the process of sending time-critical nuclear medicine supplies across the globe down to a fine art, regularly shipping molybdenum-99 to Asia and the USA.
“We can get product from Sydney to Boston as efficiently as it can be shipped there from Europe,” says Shaun Jenkinson, ANSTO Nuclear Business Group Executive.
With radioactive elements, time is of the essence. Technetium-99m has
isotope, as well as HEU ‘target plates’ for making molybdenum-99. HEU is also a critical component for nuclear weapons. Hence, the use of HEU is discouraged in accordance with an international treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The OPAL reactor, however, is technologically advanced in that it uses low-enriched target plates when making molybdenum-99 and runs on low-enriched uranium fuel, which cannot be diverted to weapons.
“We lead the way – being good citizens of the world by supplying a product that’s proliferation-proof,” says Jenkinson.
In Australia, ANSTO is the major supplier of technetium-99m in nuclear medicine. “About 600,000 Australians have nuclear medicine scans every year,” says Professor Paul Roach of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.
Since only minute amounts are needed for each scan – including bone, cardiac, lung, thyroid and kidney scans – the entire Australian market uses just 60 ml of molybdenum-99 per week. But not all nations are self-sufficient in this way.
“There have been real issues in the USA when people have struggled to get technetium because the old reactors have been down for repair,” says Roach.
As North America’s older reactors retire from service over the next two years, ANSTO is well-placed to increase its output, and take up the challenge of providing the necessary medical exports to a growing global market.
Job stats are low but hopes are high for Australia’s beleaguered manufacturing sector to transition into a high-tech, world-class, niche market operator. Myles Gough reports.
statistics leave no doubt: traditional Australian manufacturing has hit rock bottom. The sector has lost 123,000 jobs in the past decade and now accounts for just 7.9% of Australia’s total employment – an all-time low.
Blue Scope Steel closed shop at Port Kembla in 2011; in 2014, aluminium producer Alcoa shut down its Point Henry smelter near Geelong, with more closures to follow; and Holden, Ford and Toyota have announced plans to cease Australian manufacturing operations by 2017.
The demise of our century-old automotive industry will result in the loss of several thousand jobs. Many more will be threatened in the 160 or so businesses involved in the engineering, design and manufacture of automotive components.
“We face a dramatic challenge,” says Ian Christensen, CEO of the AutoCRC, explaining that ‘made to print’ manufacturing – which involves
no local innovation or design input – “now faces a bleak future”.
But Christensen is convinced there will be opportunities for smart operators, suggesting two options for component manufacturers to remain viable. For one, they could apply their expertise to other sub-sectors in Australia, such as the manufacture of biomedical devices.
Or, they could find a way to develop technologies for offshore automobile manufacturers, most likely in Southeast Asia, and partner with an overseas manufacturer to produce the components.
“To be successful at all, we must focus on value-adding and innovation,” Christensen says. “We have to aspire to dominate global niches that are technically demanding. And we must have a deep understanding of customers’ needs now and into the future.”
Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane agrees that manufacturing in Australia is transforming rapidly. “If the country
is to remain globally competitive in this area, it must continue shifting from a reliance on traditional heavy industry to a focus on specialised, high-end manufacturing in areas of competitive advantage,” he says.
Part of this shift will be driven by research and science, he adds. In October 2014, the government announced the Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda to “reset industry policy to put science at the centre of industry policy”. Advanced manufacturing is one of five sectors that the agenda will address.
are working hard to carve out these niches and developing sophisticated new products based on advanced manufacturing processes. These include lightweight composites for the construction industry and biotechnologies that will help deliver new therapies for a range of illnesses. Industry players say they are hopeful that expertise in high-tech areas, coupled with an aptitude for innovation, will help manufacturers overcome traditional obstacles such as the high Australian dollar, high labour and energy costs and geographic disadvantage.
A large number of companies in Australia are adapting and evolving to meet the needs of a global economy, according to Brad Dunstan, CEO of the Victorian Centre for Advanced Materials Manufacturing (VCAMM). “The real status of Australian manufacturing is one of cautious optimism,” he says.
Here are some examples of where a vibrant new Australian manufacturing sector might be headed.
THE DEFENCE, AUTOMOTIVE, aerospace and oil and gas industries are all showing a strong appetite for advanced composite materials here and around the world. And Australia’s composites industry is well-positioned to take advantage of that, according to Professor Murray Scott, CEO of the CRC for Advanced Composite
Structures (CRC-ACS). Scott says this is because the Australian industry is composed predominantly of ‘agile’ small-to-medium enterprise businesses, able to quickly explore new market opportunities.
“Australia has a fantastic opportunity to continue leadership in composites, particularly their application in new areas,” he says.
A notable achievement of CRC-ACS has been developing technology with Boeing Aerostructures Australia, which manufactures the wing trailing edge devices for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner – work worth an estimated $4 billion to the Australian economy over 25 years.
One new area of focus is the development of bio-composite materials that use natural plant fibres instead of glass. This allows for an environmental impact reduction of 15–50%, says Dr Andrew Beehag, CRC-ACS General Manager.
Over the short term, CRC-ACS has focussed on developing lower performance bio-composites that can be used as wood and fibreglass alternatives in the building and construction industry. Researchers have already developed a process to manufacture composites made from 2 mm-long plant fibres. This, says Beehag, represents a significant improvement over the immediate market competitor, which has only achieved reinforced lengths of around 0.1 mm and a much weaker performance.
Based on the timing and success of these trials, CRC-ACS and its spin-off ACS Australia should be in a strong position to accelerate commercialisation activities, Beehag says.
LIGHTWEIGHT CARBON fibre composites are becoming crucial to automotive manufacturing around the world as companies strive to reduce vehicle weight. Reduced weight translates into lower fuel consumption costs.
Australia already has one success story with Carbon Revolution – a company that has developed a one-piece carbon fibre wheel for sports cars, which is 40–50% lighter than aluminium alternatives.
But manufacturing carbon fibre composites affordably, at the volume needed to keep pace with automobile production, poses a considerable challenge. Dunstan says to be acceptable to mainstream manufacturing, the composites industry needs to show that it can produce one part per minute at a cost of about $14 per kilogram. Once that challenge is met, he says, the floodgates will open.
Australian success story Carbon Revolution has developed a one-piece carbon fibre wheel, which is 40–50% lighter than aluminium alternatives.
“Laboratory trials have shown that a 30–40% increase in strength may be achievable with our approach,” Beehag says. And that would come with only a 10% higher cost. This gives CRC-ACS flexibility to develop a premium product with increased performance, or to achieve cost savings while maintaining current performance standards.
Two companies are already trialling these next generation building products.
To address the problem of affordable mass production, the AutoCRC is supporting a project investigating a novel epoxy resin system. It’s hoped that tailored resins will be more adept at achieving faster curing times, ultimately increasing the rate of production as required.
This work is taking place at Carbon Nexus, a $34 million research and pilot manufacturing facility in Geelong. It’s been developed by Deakin University in partnership with VCAMM, with support from the Victorian and Australian Governments.
“If we can create new, globally relevant intellectual property at Carbon Nexus that helps meet
this grand challenge of high-rate composite manufacturing and license it to Australian industry, then those Australian companies are in the box seat to manufacture parts in high volume for a burgeoning market,” says Dunstan. High performance plastics offer another option to reduce vehicle weight and improve fuel efficiency in the automotive and aviation industries. The global market for injection-moulded plastics is expected to reach about $319 billion by 2020. The creation of millions of plastic components for transport and other industries begins with a single mould. However, developing moulds requires highly specialised experts in the design stage and many prototypes. This generates waste and makes the process time-consuming and expensive.
To solve this problem, the AutoCRC, along with the Victorian Partnership of Advanced Computing and the Malaysia Automotive Institute, have developed a new software toolkit known as vMould. This software application intelligently optimises mould design and development. It eliminates the need for specialists, allows for more accurate component designs with fewer flaws –meaning fewer prototypes and less waste – and improves overall production speed.
Cell building –the biotech path
ANOTHER INNOVATIVE path for Australian manufacturing is biotechnology, particularly cell therapies. Cell therapies use living cells to replace, repair or regenerate damaged or diseased tissue.
The $59 million CRC for Cell Therapy Manufacturing (CTM CRC) was set up to develop cost-effective manufacturing methods for cell therapies and create the pathways to put them into clinical practice.
“The cell therapy industry is the fastest growing sector of the regenerative medicine market,” explains Dr Sherry Kothari, the CTM CRC’s Managing Director.
Despite regulatory and cost hurdles, there is already intense international competition in the area due to the industry’s strong growth potential.
“Australia has the potential to become a world leader in the development of cell therapies,” Kothari says. “We have the chance to establish ourselves as a leader in the field, grow a new manufacturing industry, create jobs and, above all, transform healthcare outcomes.”
One of several promising research projects already underway at the CTM CRC aims to improve islet cell transplantation. Transplanted islet cells from donor pancreata have significant benefits for people with type 1 diabetes by potentially enabling them to survive without insulin injections. But the process of isolating and transplanting these cells is fraught with technical difficulties, high costs and low accessibility.
One of the most critical issues is the extensive cell death that occurs during donor islet processing and after transplantation. CRC researchers have been working to improve cell survival during lab-to-hospital transfers, and are engineering ‘scaffolds’ and coatings to promote islet cell survival before and after transplants.
Kothari says this will make currently prohibitively expensive cell therapies far more accessible to a greater number of people living with diabetes in Australia and elsewhere.
www.crc-acs.com.au www.autocrc.com www.ctmcrc.com www.amcrc.com.au
WITH GEELONG STILL reeling from the decline of traditional manufacturing, there’s probably no better place for Australia to experience the potential of a new style of industry.
A cell therapy innovation has resulted in an exciting new partnership that will see an advanced manufacturing plant set up in Geelong within the next 18 months to manufacture short nano-fibres. These are used in high-tech applications, including as a medium for cell growth.
Working with the Advanced Manufacturing CRC (AMCRC) in a large collaborative project involving Deakin University, Monash University and VCAMM, Australian biotechnology startup Cytomatrix has developed
world-first technology that enables the commercial-scale manufacture of haematopoietic stem cells. These are used in bone marrow transplants and to treat people with leukaemia and other cancers, and help restore red and white blood cells destroyed by high doses of chemo- and radiation-therapy.
Andrew McLellan, CEO of the AMCRC, says the technology could significantly shorten hospital stays for transplant recipients. It’s a great example, says McLellan, of an innovative Australian organisation operating in a high value, high knowledge-based niche.
“These organisations need to be celebrated and seen as being the leaders of what can happen in the future.”
TThe 3% of Australians living in remote regions face significant health and social challenges. Two CRCs are finding solutions, writes Fran Molloy .
HE PLIGHT OF Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and other people living in remote Australia is a “global shame”, warned Dr Tom Calma in November 2014. Calma is Chair of Ninti One, the not-for-profit organisation that manages the CRC for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP).
More than half a million Australians live in remote areas. Occupying a wide range of climate zones across 80% of our landmass, these regions encompass diverse and rich cultures and unique landscapes. This poses big research challenges for the CRCs working there – primarily the CRC-REP and the Lowitja Institute.
Headquartered in Alice Springs, Ninti One has delivered $239 million in social and economic benefits to remote Australia since its inception in 2003. The research is mostly concerned with social good, rather than commercial outcomes, which can make the impact hard to gauge, says Calma. “Research is imperative in order to properly understand and improve the lives of people living in remote Australia,” he says.
Calma is a distinguished Aboriginal leader and elder of the Kungarakan people in the Northern Territory. He cites feral camel management as an example of economic good delivered by
Ninti One: 500 rangers were trained to control camel populations and map and maintain waterholes, preventing more than $3 million a year in damage to fences, bores and waterholes in pastoral properties and local communities.
Ninti One has invested $1 million in their Pastoral Precision Project, which uses spatial data to match livestock performance to environmental conditions. The product is now ready for market and is expected to benefit many farmers.
To assist researchers working on these kinds of projects in remote Australia, Ninti One has produced guidelines in conjunction with community members with protocols around confidentiality, for example. “Sometimes researchers need to understand that they cannot write down all the stories,” says Calma. These also advise where research information and recordings should be kept.
Ninti One has trained 90 Aboriginal Community Researchers who live in remote communities to undertake research and surveys in the community.
“They have the capacity to understand the language of the community, as well as all the nuances of behaviours within the community,” says Calma. “In working with a client, they can come up with a good survey
“Bureaucrats without an understanding of a community will come in with preconceived ideas.”
tool, apply it and then report back on it. This is integral to getting good information.”
Calma is a critic of what he calls “fly-in, fly-out bureaucrats” who spend a day or two in a community, speak to a few select people and then leave thinking they have an understanding of the region’s issues.
“Our research shows that non-Indigenous or even Indigenous bureaucrats without an understanding of a particular community will come in with preconceived ideas,” he says, adding that this can lead them to frame their questions to get a pre-determined outcome. Aboriginal people then tell bureaucrats what they think they want to hear, or the bureaucrats mistake silence for agreement, Calma explains.
Head Office Node (Ninti One office)
Research Locations
Remote Australia
Since
THE CRC PROGRAM is the only Commonwealth initiative providing a link between industry, academia, government and the communities of remote regions, Calma says.
“We know from past, bitter experience the policies imposed from on high and afar seldom work well in remote Australia. Only when you truly engage the people who live there do you get results.
“At the moment there is evidence that the wellbeing of remote Australians is at increasing risk, and urgent action is needed to reverse this trend and to begin building a more optimistic, prosperous and equitable future for them.”
When the CRC analysed employment across remote Australia, they found that a large percentage of jobs were held by non-Indigenous people with a Year 10 or less level of education, despite “more than adequate numbers of Aboriginal people with Year 10 and above qualifications,” says Rod Reeve, Ninti One’s Managing Director.
Another significant project, led by Professor John Guenther from Flinders University, aims to identify how education can improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people in remote areas. For the Anangu people in Central Australia, Guenther proposed an academy built around a “red dirt” curriculum covering rural economics, local histories, digital literacies and grammar.
The principle behind the academy comes from other projects Ninti One has facilitated, where local and non-local knowledge is shared, and both knowledge systems are treated with equal weight and respect.
“We try to look at an issue from many different directions,” Calma says.
Calma was formerly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission, which he points out has some aspects in common with Ninti One.
“A human rights-based approach and a community development approach are very similar. They are both about making people the centre of what you do, and we recognise that all our activities are for the constituency of remote Australians.”
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THE HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL Lowitja Institute, established in 2010 as the national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research, garnered an additional five years of funding in July 2014. The Institute was built on 14 years of CRCs, beginning with the CRC for Aboriginal and Tropical Health in 1997.
This CRC introduced a new roundtable process, which set research priorities involving the community as well as researchers and policy-makers – changing the way research into Indigenous health took place.
Pat Anderson, Chair of the Lowitja Institute, says the process instituted a new way of commissioning projects, with community leaders at the centre of decision-making. The Institute works collaboratively with stakeholders, building up the research skills of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people along the way.
“Our guiding principle has always been that, in order to improve our health, we need to create our own solutions rather than have them imposed upon us,” Anderson said at the opening of the Institute’s new offices in October 2014.
Preventative health is high on the agenda. The CRC recently evaluated Deadly Choices – a program encouraging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in southern Queensland to make healthy choices around nutrition, physical activity, smoking and use of harmful substances. The seven-week school and community-based chronic disease prevention and education initiative has grown to encompass at least 1000 children from more than 100 schools and community health programs.
While substantial progress has been made in Indigenous people having a greater stake in health service delivery, research and policymaking, Anderson points out there’s a long way to go.
“With life expectancy for Australia’s First Peoples still languishing 11 years behind our fellow countrymen and women, we clearly have our work cut out for us.”
It’s long been accepted that vision declines with age, but an Australian invention could soon change this, writes Clare Pain .
Erickson’s team works with the prestigious Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Florida, USA. The partnership has already led to improved medical microscopic imaging technology for use during the procedure, which could immediately benefit eye surgeons conducting cataract operations, Erickson says.
The accommodating gel project aims to replace the stiff natural lens with a new lens made from a siloxane gel – a compound of silicone. First, the non-functioning natural lens would be extracted through a procedure similar to surgery for cataracts (lenses which have become opaque). Then, the gel would be injected into the transparent lens capsule. Finding a suitable material to replace the lens has been a 20-year search, says Erickson. The requirements are stringent: it must be a moderately viscous liquid that can be injected, and it must polymerise into a soft, flexible gel. It also has to be biocompatible and, of course, transparent. Developed in Australia, the gel is being trialled in rabbits.
“We’re fine-tuning the properties,” says Erickson. “Over the next two to three years, we hope to move into animal models that more closely resemble humans, and then on to human subjects.”
At age 40–45, if you find you have to hold a book further away to read it, you may have developed presbyopia: an ageing-related condition in which the eye’s ability to focus on near objects is reduced as its lens progressively stiffens. At this point in life, some people visit an optometrist for the first time. Suddenly they need glasses – and will for the rest of their lives.
If Dr Paul Erickson has his way, however, future generations may be heading straight to an ophthalmic surgeon to have a revolutionary ‘accommodating gel’ injected into their eyes.
Originally from Pennsylvania, USA, Erickson has led the accommodating gel project since 2010 with significant funding from the Vision CRC. He is the CEO of Brien Holden Vision Pty Ltd and Adventus Technology Inc – companies through which Vision CRC participant the Brien Holden Vision Institute develops and commercialises its technologies.
The crystalline lenses in our eyes can adjust their focal length (or ‘accommodate’) by changing shape – bulging or flattening according to the tension in fibres that connect the lens to the circular muscle surrounding the lens capsule. It’s a very flexible lens, but it evolved for a species that lives to around 40 years old, Erickson explains.
“During a person’s life, the lens material loses its softness and flexibility, and at around age 40 the loss begins to accelerate,” he adds. “It reaches a point where it’s very difficult for the stiffer lens to change its shape in order to see at a normal reading distance.”
Professor Ian Chubb Chief SCientiSt of AuStrAliA
Aligning education and training with employers needs
11th & 12th february 2015, CQ functions, melbourne
Leonie Walsh Lead Scientist for Victoria StAte Government of viCtoriA
Strategies for:
improving access to quality Stem education
Attracting students into Stem higher education courses
Innes Willox Chief Executive Officer
AuStrAliAn induStry Group
Professor Leon Sterling Pro-Vice Chancellor Swinburne univerSity
Researched by
Equipping students with the skills and capabilities employers need
increasing & improving Stem specialised teachers
Including industry case studies from Google and IBM
Professor John Yearwood, Federation University WorKShopS places are limited!
A - How to improve science and mathematics teaching Glenys Thompson, Department of Education and Children’s Services, Government of SA
B - How to reduce the gap between education and workforce needs
Fairer regulation and better access to finance and equity will give entrepreneurs plenty of encouragement, says Tony Peacock
HEAR calls for a more entrepreneurial culture. But what does that mean in practical terms? Yes, it is affected by our national psyche, outlook and attitude to risk. We hear that Australians don’t ‘embrace failure’, and that our finance sector is too conservative in its attitude to science and innovation. These opinions might be true, but regardless we also have to get the building blocks right.
The ‘next big thing’ might come from a series of small steps in developing the environment for more innovators and entrepreneurs to thrive. The government has just released an Industry Innovation and Competitiveness Agenda, which features a few of the steps that will improve the situation for entrepreneurs in Australia.
Issuing share options to employees is an important way of attracting talent. New companies have an idea, a prayer and not much cash. But brilliant young people are often willing to take shares or options in lieu of salaries for a year or two to join the startup entrepreneurial adventure. They might take a very low salary, or spend a year couch surfing or forgoing the benefits of deodorant.
The incredible stories of the likes of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the rest mean that by taking shares in lieu of salary they may strike it rich. In Australia, rules introduced in 2009 killed off this pathway by demanding that tax be paid on those shares immediately. The government has now fixed that issue.
Removing barriers is another important avenue to increase business competitiveness in Australia. Simple things like vaccine companies undergoing identical audits from different regulatory agencies draws cash – and focus – out of the business. The government has decided to have a serious go at lowering those barriers. For the Treasurer’s coming tax review, the Minister for Industry has flagged two more innovations: crowd sourcing of equity finance, and patent boxes. Australia is slow on the equity issue, with the USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand all ahead of us. But the government has received a very comprehensive report detailing the necessary changes, and action is expected soon. The patent box concept, which started in the UK, allows companies to isolate earnings from patents and have them favourably taxed.
Apart from government, financing of innovation is slowly improving. Westpac has provided $50 million to Reinventure, a venture capital company. CSIRO’s new CEO, Larry Marshall, is an Aussie with 25 years of venture capital experience. If the equity-financing model allows self-managed super funds to invest, then who knows the limits?
Firing up the entrepreneurial spirit in Australia is the next big thing. The foundations are quickly being laid – next we need the builders to come in. The gap year has become common after senior secondary school. Wouldn’t it be something to see a ‘growth year’, when graduates or postgraduates gave themselves a year to pursue an idea?
Boosting skills
Removing barriers
Improving finance
There are brilliant young people willing to take shares in lieu of salaries to join a startup.
KnowHow founder Tony Peacock is the CEO of the CRC Association and 2014 Monash University Churchill Fellow at The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.
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Writers: Rosslyn Beeby, Laura Boness, Gemma Chilton, Jude Dineley, Karen McGhee, Myles Gough, Fran Molloy, Clare Pain, Tony Peacock, Penny Pryor
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KnowHow is a magazine for science, business and industry, focused on Australian discovery and innovation, produced on behalf of the Cooperative Research Centres Association by Refraction Media, a custom publishing house based in Sydney.
The Cooperative Research Centres Program was established by the Australian government in 1990 to improve the effectiveness of Australia’s research effort through bringing together researchers in the public and private sectors with the end users. The CRC Program links researchers with industry and government with a focus towards research application
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Cover image by Lauren Trompp. This issue went to press 13 November 2014.
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