Featured image of Alan Gilbert Building, University of Melbourne by Donaldytong licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The University of Melbourne is among nine Australian and New Zealand universities to sign a landmark deal today with the London-listed IP Group plc that will see $200 million being made available to find and commercialise research ideas and innovation.
The commercialisation agreement – the first of its type in Australasia – involves IP Group Australia, the Group of Eight universities in Australia and the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
IP Group, a leader in the commercialisation of scientific innovation developed in research universities in the UK and the US, will invest at least $200 million over 10 years to fund investments in spin-out companies based on the intellectual property (IP) developed by academics at the nine universities, generated from research in areas such as digital medicine, new medical therapies and quantum computing.
The investment is being supported through a capital raising, which has seen the participation of new shareholders, Telstra Super Pty Ltd, Temasek and M&G as well as existing shareholders Invesco, Woodford and Lansdowne.
The nine universities are the University of Melbourne, the University of Adelaide, Australian National University, Monash University, UNSW Sydney, the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia in Australia, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The agreements with each university are for an initial 20-year term, and seek to support the best and brightest researchers to translate their findings into new and innovative ways to improve the economic and social wellbeing of Australasians.
University of Melbourne Vice-Principal Enterprise Doron Ben-Meir said the IP Group investment model addressed a number of important aspects of translating and commercialising University originated intellectual property.
“It invests from a very early stage, uses its international networks to help build management and governance teams and invests across all disciplines, which is important for a comprehensive University such as the University of Melbourne,” Mr. Ben-Meir said.
“Combining this model with other complementary funding and translation mechanisms we are establishing is another important step forward in building the infrastructure necessary to see the results of our world-class research find beneficial expression in the community.”
IP Group Chief Executive Alan Aubrey said the agreement with the University of Melbourne and the other Go8 partners and the University of Auckland would help world-class research and innovation reach a global market.
“The business model we are using is similar to the model IP Group has used successfully in the UK and the US, providing business-building expertise, capital, networks, recruitment and business support,” Mr. Aubrey said.
“We believe the model represents a significant commercial opportunity for all those involved.”
Go8 Chair Professor Peter Høj said the investment was a vote of confidence from global capital markets in the quality of research and innovation by the Go8 and the University of Auckland.
“It is a significant recognition of our leading research-intensive universities and the $6 billion a year of research which they undertake,” Professor Høj said.