High-impact research commercialisation partnerships celebrated

The Partners in Research Excellence Awards, held as part of The University of Queensland’s Research Week celebrations, awarded enterprising UQ researchers and their industry partners for the significant impact of their research collaboration.

UniQuest, the main commercialisation company of The University of Queensland, co-hosted the Awards which showcased UQ’s research excellence in four channels: Engineering, Materials & ICT; Health; Science; and, Social Enterprise.

UniQuest’s CEO, Dr Dean Moss, said that industry partnerships are a valuable component of research excellence and are important to UQ and to UniQuest.

“UniQuest is delighted to recognise outstanding UQ researchers who have exemplified true partnership with industry and are successfully translating research into products, services and processes that have value to their partners” he said.

The awardees were:

Engineering, Materials & ICT:

Associate Professor Jason Stokes from the School of Chemical Engineering; and Dr Greg Yep, PepsiCo Senior Vice President of Long Term Research for a collaboration to provide enabling technologies with the aim of giving consumers healthy variations of the world’s most popular snack foods and drinks, without sacrificing taste and mouth-feel.

“We are honoured to receive the Award,” PepsiCo Senior Vice President of Long Term Research Dr Greg Yep, said from New York.

“Our partnership with UQ has been an extremely fruitful collaboration for us where we are at the forefront of innovation and providing critical insights to the redesign of the next generation of foods and beverages.  We are delighted to be working with thought leaders like Associate Professor Jason Stokes and Professor Mike Gidley,” Dr Yep said.

Health:

Professor Ranjeny Thomas from the UQ Diamantina Institute and Ms Kathy Connell, Director, New Ventures ANZ for Johnson & Johnson; Asia Pacific Innovation Centre, for their work involving the Dendright immunotherapy technology (developed by Professor Thomas) as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

Science:

Professor Paulo Vasconcelos, Head of the School of Earth Sciences and Dr Isabela Carmo, geologist at Petrobras, for their project investigating the origin and evolution of the pre-salt reservoirs along the east coast of South America, the largest oil discovery of the past 30 years.

Social Enterprise:

Associate Professor Karen Moni and Dr Anne Jobling from the School of Education and Mr David Barbagallo, Endeavour Foundation CEO, to disseminate Latch-On® – a post-school literacy program for adults with intellectual disabilities in Australia.

“UniQuest has been in the industry partnering space for 30 years and the evidence of impact, beyond purely a global portfolio of more than 40 active start-ups and $10 billion of product sales derived from UQ technology, are recorded in our more than 30 commercialisation stories,” Dr Moss said.

Media: UniQuest, Andrew Harvey mob 0409 767 199