$70m research institute opens at UQ

The latest addition to a cluster of research institutes at The University of Queensland, the $70m Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), has opened at the university's St Lucia campus.

The institute is Australia's first purpose-built facility for research combining the biological, chemical and physical sciences. It also has a strong focus on working with industry and commercialisation of outcomes.

UQ Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay, AC, said the AIBN was the latest outcome of a highly-successful partnership between The University of Queensland, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the Queensland government.

Hay said the AIBN had attracted team leaders, post-doctoral researchers and students from around the world.

"Many of these researchers are part of international collaborations of the highest calibre, with organisations including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in the US, the Chinese Academy of Science and the European Union," Hay said.

AIBN director Professor Peter Gray said the new AIBN building represented the latest in laboratory design. It currently houses over 250 staff and students, with a capacity of 350, in conditions found in very few places globally.

"Furthermore, the facilities and equipment found within the building are among the most advanced, enabling research at the cutting edge of the bio and nano fields," Gray said.

Residents of the new building include research groups with interests ranging broadly from genes to nanoparticles. Projects range from technologies to help prevent chemotherapy patients from contracting life-threatening infections; to a needle-less syringe for the delivery of vaccines; to biological markers for early cancer diagnosis; molecules with detergent properties known as surfactants to improve recovery of crude oil from oilfields; and bio-plastics from sugarcane.

The building houses state-of-the-art microfabrication facilities (the collective term for the technologies used to fabricate components on a micrometre-sized scale), a good manufacturing practice (GMP) ready bioprocessing facility and world-class microscopy facilities coupled with advanced data storage and visualisation packages.

Premier Peter Beattie said the Queensland government and leading experts at The University of Queensland identified at an early stage the enormous potential of marrying bioengineering with nanotechnology.

It joins a growing number of Smart State initiatives at UQ to be supported by state government, including the Queensland Brain Institute, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, the Sustainable Minerals Institute, the Queensland Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Network, and the UQ Centre for Clinical Research.

Hay said the facility's completion reasserted that UQ " substantially supported by the Queensland government and The Atlantic Philanthropies " was building Australia's finest cluster of new science research institutes.

In coming years, a $60m UQ Centre for Clinical Research and a $300m translational medical research facility will also become Brisbane research landmarks.

Hay said their addition would mean that by the end of this decade, more than 1500 scientists would be conducting bio-related research in new UQ facilities.

The opening of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology follows two years' construction of the six-level facility on College Road.