Students at the University of Auckland’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
A world-renowned university is in our midst, creating and supporting innovative global industries while developing and delivering health research to benefit all New Zealanders. This is all taking place at one of the most dynamic times in our Indo-Asia-Pacific region, offering enormous opportunities to strengthen our society and economy.
As Tāmaki Makaurau strives to accelerate industry and businesses, many roads lead to the University of Auckland. There, you can meet a virtual human, monitor a satellite at Te Pūnaha Ātea Space Institute’s Mission Operations Control Centre, discover high-value MedTech start-ups that have secured US Food and Drug Administration approval and see how genomic research is revolutionising cancer treatment.
For decades, New Zealand leaders have called for new knowledge-based industries to secure the country’s economic future. That future is here.
Tech-based artificial intelligence (AI), space, medical technologies and precision health research, led by globally recognised experts, thrive at the University of Auckland. Our research supports existing businesses and organisations while simultaneously launching new ones. Transdisciplinary exploration is taking place in the newly launched Ngā Ara Whetū: Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Society, which is responding to the pressing environmental and humanitarian challenges of our time.
Across the world, universities are at the core of economic transformation and job creation, and they play a unique role in a nation’s innovation ecosystem. We are on course to develop a high-skilled, high-wage economy powered to compete globally with world-leading researchers, internationally connected entrepreneurs and university-educated, innovation-savvy employees. Our challenge is to scale what we are doing, accelerate the pace and concentration of what we do, make it run faster and ensure we develop the talent required to fulfil what we know we can do.
Business, investors, central and local government and the tertiary education sector, working together with a shared goal, can meet this challenge.
This approach, drawing key sectors together with a shared focus, has been the engine that has seen other small nations such as Singapore, Ireland, Finland, Denmark and Estonia succeed. Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, is committed to playing its part. We already are, and we want to do more.
This commitment and vision saw us launch our Space Institute in 2019. It combines a platform of space infrastructure with New Zealand’s most experienced research and technical staff to support the country’s fast-growing commercial space sector. The institute has established an impressive commercialisation record in less than five years. Institute labs support more than 20 space-related companies, and from university research in these labs, six start-ups or spin-out companies have been born: StardustMe, Zenno Astronautics, NewSpace Systems NZ, OutThere Astronautics, Astrix and Frond.
The University’s Cloud 9 incubator is another corner of our campus where the country’s tech-enabled future is unfolding fast. It is built on our world-leading Auckland Bioengineering Institute and its application of engineering sciences and technical innovations to improve medical diagnosis and the treatment of injury and disease. This is where potential new Medtech products begin. Researcher Gonzalo Maso Talou is using AI in brain imaging to detect the onset of disease.
MedTech is a $2.1 billion sector in New Zealand with more than 200 medical companies involved in devices, digital health and IT. It has enormous potential. We have a track record in supporting start-ups to progress to the world stage.
From medical devices to medical treatments, our precision medicine research uses machine learning and AI genomic analysis to enable the delivery of more cost-efficient, personalised and practical treatments for cancer patients. No other research area is more rapidly translated into the clinical and commercial world with high returns. At the university, we have deliberately and methodically built the workforce and capability to enable precision cancer treatment, supported by $25 million in philanthropy. We are poised to expand this world-class technology nationwide.
These examples highlight some of the research where New Zealand excels.
In our post-pandemic, economically challenged environment, we must ensure our research investments focus on the country’s research strengths, maximising opportunities to strengthen the country’s social and economic future.
Innovation and entrepreneurship are increasingly built into the student experience at the University of Auckland – laying the digital groundwork for students and industry to adopt a shared mindset of what is possible. Our Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is open to all students, exposing them to hands-on, cutting-edge tech such as artificial intelligence, automation and digital technologies often supported by industry experts. The centre’s Velocity programme has ignited almost 300 ventures, created over 3200 jobs, raised almost $1.4b in capital and won several international awards. The university is ensuring the country has a tech-aware workforce.
That workforce may work at the university’s developing Newmarket Innovation Precinct, which is already home to 20 companies, start-ups and spin-out companies that work alongside AI and computer science academics. They are the foundation tenants of an expanding innovation ecosystem located close to the university’s medical campus, two hospitals, the medical software company Orion Health and Newmarket’s vibrant commercial and transport hub. Concentrating innovative companies and academic researchers in a precinct is a proven approach to drive an innovative and competitive economy.
Across the city, you will also find University of Auckland students and graduates at Eden Park. Our three-year strategic partnership with the Eden Park Trust creates innovative opportunities for research, teaching and learning and showcases our commitment to Aucklanders.
We remain extremely aware that domestic success rests on global connectedness, an attribute that has been part of the university’s DNA since it was founded in 1883. Our long-term partnerships reach worldwide, enabling research collaborations and student mobility. Recent news is our success securing multimillion-dollar Horizon Europe research funding for three projects. We also look forward to welcoming vice-chancellors and presidents from world-leading research universities when the university hosts a meeting of the 60-member Asia Pacific Rim University network leaders in June.
Auckland is a fast-growing global city. That brings challenges and opportunities, all made even more acute by our rapidly changing world and climate change. As a global civic institution, Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland is anchored firmly to support our collective efforts to meet those opportunities and challenges with determination and our commitment to excellence.
2022 was a big year for Professor Greg O’Grady, Dr Armen Gharibans and their team, who developed Alimetry, a non-invasive device to help diagnose stomach problems and other gastric issues.
It was the year they secured FDA clearance for the use of their device in the US market for gastric diagnoses.
Clearance was a significant milestone founded on a decade-long collaboration of groundbreaking university science and engineering.
Alimetry uses data from electrodes placed on the abdomen and patient feedback on their symptoms to provide a richer dataset to help clinicians determine treatment pathways.
The device has been recognised with three NZ Hi-Tech awards for Innovation and was a finalist at the MedTech Innovator Asia Pacific Challenge for regional MedTech start-ups.
The University of Auckland:
· Professor Dawn Freshwater is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland
Red and green tape and orange cones on 'lofty' projects are the bane of Brown's existence.