Trajan's innovation agenda

Trajan Scientific and Medical this week welcomed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to its global headquarters in Melbourne, in a visit which showcased how the company’s partnerships with academia and start-ups are demonstrative of the Prime Minister’s vision for an innovation agenda.

Discussion during the visit covered Trajan’s fresh take on partnering with academia, including the University of Tasmania and The University of Adelaide, demonstrating ‘disruptive innovation’ and showing that many of the government’s longer term goals around collaboration and support of start-ups are already underway. According to the company’s CEO, Stephen Tomisich, “Trajan identified the vital role of collaboration with other sectors, including academia and start-ups, some time ago.”

Trajan’s strategic collaboration with The University of Adelaide, announced in September, sees the realisation of an R&D and manufacturing hub based on a new generation of specialty glass products. The hub will help scientists in the university’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) commercialise their research into products that have the potential to be utilised in medical and scientific applications including genetic testing, biomarker discovery and detection, environmental analysis, food safety testing, testing for drugs of abuse and therapeutic drug monitoring.

In 2013, a collaboration between the University of Tasmania, Trajan and the federal government saw the creation of the $5.2 million Australian Research Council (ARC) Training Centre for Portable Analytical Separation Technologies (ASTech) at the university. Researchers at the centre are driving at new technologies that could see complex medical and industrial testing brought out of the lab and onto a smartphone. The prospect of ‘miniaturising’ analytical separation technologies could also produce huge efficiencies in time and logistics.

Bridging the gap between the academic world and real life is a major goal for Trajan, whose focus is on developing and commercialising technologies that enable analytical systems to be more selective, sensitive and specific for biological, environmental or food-related measurements. Tomisich said, “Trajan’s vision is that through science interfacing with society, we can impact the wellbeing of a growing number of communities globally.”

The visit comes as the Australian Government announces three pillars to its innovation agenda, with the third pillar changing the way universities and academics are funded, making part of their funding dependent on engaging with industry and successfully creating start-ups from their research. Tomisich said Trajan is “committed to helping the Prime Minister understand more about how [the company’s] collaborative model and technology direction is reflected in the Australian Government’s plans to support growth of the scientific industry here and overseas”.