Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

UOW’s Innovation campus is located less than 5 kilometres from the main Wollongong Campus and houses a range of business, governmental entities and research bodies. This community of researchers, teachers, learners and doers, is dedicated to supporting and accelerating achievement by delivering robust academic and industry output. Innovation Campus supports organisations, individuals and our region to connect to an ideas network dedicated to global impacts, and collaborate with government, industry and the community. These bodies form a multidisciplinary network, equipping tenants with actionable insights to drive local and global growth.

iAccelerate is a unique business accelerator and incubator program at UOW, where start-ups, scaleups, social enterprises and intrapreneurs thrive. Companies are supported by a robust model of education, mentoring, seed funding and unparalleled access to one of the world’s most innovative young research universities. iAccelerate teaches local start-ups and companies to think about the impact of their business, supplementing those ‘hard’ skills in business development with a focus on sustainability, ethics, leadership, collaboration and building a social conscience into business models. 

The Translational Research Initiative for Cell Engineering and Printing - TRICEP - works with research institutions and industry to develop innovative technologies using 3D bioprinting. TRICEP’s world leading research infrastructure assists companies to bring novel technology from concept stage through to prototyping and manufacturing of hardware, to accelerate product development and rapidly decrease time to market.

The Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM) is a purpose-built facility at UOW’s Innovation Campus to help transform multi-functional materials research into commercial reality. The researchers at AIIM are at the cutting edge of developing and applying new and innovative materials. AIIM is the first facility that bridges the gaps between breakthroughs, prototyping and commercialisation. The multidisciplinary focus of the Institute brings together biologists, clinicians, chemists, physicists engineers and materials scientists.

The UOW Makerspace is a public creative space providing ‘makers’, both new and experienced, with access to tools, equipment and training. The team fosters an inclusive, vibrant, supportive and exploratory environment for all in the community who are interested in creating, repairing inventing, tinkering or learning-by-doing. The UOW Makerspace provides access to a wide range of equipment and provides expert training and support. The UOW Makerspace is a pilot space of a joint initiative of the Australian Institute for Innovative Materials, Science Space and the Global Challenges Program. The space runs workshops for groups and individuals including schools, teachers and corporate events.

Advantage SME is UOW’s in-house industry matchmaker, helping businesses and researchers find their ideal partners and build relationships. The Generator Lab connects SMEs, industry and government enterprises with UOW researchers and other stakeholders to solve their innovation problems by using disruptive technologies and collaborative people power.

SMART brings together experts from fields such as rail, infrastructure systems, transport, water, energy, economics and modelling and simulation, providing 30 state-of-the-art laboratories to facilitate this important research. Having created a strong network of global collaborators developing key international partnerships and collaborations, SMART is addressing some of the big challenges in the infrastructure sector. 

Univative takes students from the classroom to the boardroom to provide students with consultancy experience, working with organisations from all sectors on addressing real strategic issues and business challenges. Since its launch, Univative has supported 80+ businesses and has had 1,200+ students complete the program.

The Smart Garments project has been investigating the feasibility of incorporating antenna arrays within garments for the purposes of communication, localisation and tracking, as well as health monitoring for individuals. The researchers have since developed this technology through a research partnership with Australian wool manufacturer Bluey Merino and with support of the NSW Government.

MOSkin is the world’s most advanced and cost-effective medical radiation sensor technology. This next generation technology is the only real-time radiation sensor that provides an accurate measure of dose to the skin during radiation therapy treatment or diagnostic radiology procedures. Its design allows greater real time control of the amount of radiation delivered, leading to better outcomes for patients. MOSkin was developed by Researchers at UOW Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP), led by Distinguished Professor Anatoly Rozenfeld and commercialised by med-tech company Electrogenics who received Australian Technology Company of the Year in the Australian Technology Competition 2020 and the Medtech and Pharma Award.

The UOW Global Challenges Program is a strategic interdisciplinary research initiative focussing on four key challenges. The Making Future Industries challenge supports research projects addressing the impact of new technologies and encourages the development of new-to-world products that have a positive impact on society. The challenge has a focus on emerging technologies, new product development, STEM education, the role of making and the interaction of these areas to enhance our capacity for innovation.