La Trobe has contributed $9 million in funding, matched by Breakthrough Victoria, to create new partnership agreements to drive research commercialisation and investment in start-up companies spun out of La Trobe research.
Minister for Industry and Innovation Ben Carroll said, “We are backing the translation of unique research and development from our world class universities into commercial opportunities locally and globally. This partnership between Victorian universities and Breakthrough Victoria will ensure our brightest ideas grow locally.”
La Trobe’s Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Industry Engagement), Professor Susan Dodds, said the new investment partnership with Breakthrough Victoria would not only help move critical research from lab to market, but would encourage and support La Trobe researchers to take a commercial approach.
“Breakthrough Victoria’s significant new investment partnership with La Trobe University will act as a catalyst to ensure the University’s pioneering research in areas such as digital health, AI, disease detection and treatment and food security can be translated into applications that will help transform lives and support economies on a national and global scale,” Professor Dodds said.
“This important investment will support and encourage an entrepreneurial mindset, enabling our researchers to create start-up companies from their research that will sit within the University’s expanding research and innovation ecosystem, leading to real-world impact.”
About the Breakthrough Victoria investment partnership
The partnership is being established under the $100 million Breakthrough Victoria – University Innovation Platform, which aims to increase commercialisation of critical research with real-world benefits from Victorian universities.
Investment in startups at this critical early stage will help fund product concepts, prototypes and trials to help ensure research with strong commercial potential does not succumb to the valley of death.
Researchers and academics will also receive support to better identify and translate ideas into commercial opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial capability.
Media contact: Claire Bowers, 0437 279 903, c.bowers@latrobe.edu.au
