Sydney research centre to nurture U.S approaches to innovation

Merck has stumped up $500,000 to fund a new research centre at the University of Sydney designed to help Australia benefit from U.S approaches to innovation.

The US Studies Centre (USSC) program will seek to provide in depth analysis of how the road from research to commercialisation is traversed in the U.S with a view to improving the quality of interaction between government, business and academia in Australia.

Phase one of the USSC Program on Innovation will highlight key differences between the acclaimed San Diego biotechnology cluster and the relatively fragmented development of various botechnology initiatives in the various Australian states.

It is hoped that the projects will lead to an improved understanding of the specific forces that stimulate the development of innovative clusters, such as access to venture capital and other resources, networks and global partnerships, national regimes for intellectual property, scale and agglomeration and processes for the transfer of technology from universities to the private sector.

The research program is directed by Sydney University’s Professor Bruce McKern.