Australia must tweak business incentives and fund more pilot lines to pull university research across the valley of death with industry, according to materials scientist and recycling pioneer Veena Sahajwalla.
In a speech to the National Press Club this week amid a generational review of national R&D, the 2022 NSW Australian of the Year laid out her recycling ‘microfactory’ model as one path forward.
The nimble and collaborative approach has seen councils and businesses deploy lab developed technologies in use cases like recycling mattresses and glass into ceramic tiles, turning ewaste into 3D printing filament, or recovering aluminium destined for landfill.
With several of the factories now operating with industry partners in regional communities and able to scale up based on demand, it’s a model that shows Australian innovation can be commercialised beyond labs and innovation precincts.
“I think it’s a hopeful story, I think my goals are achievable,” Professor Sahajwalla said.
“We can do all of this stuff, the technology works, it’s not expensive if you’ve got the budget of a council or a medium sized business. We’ve done the science, we know it works.”
The factories are part of the solution to a global decarbonisation mission but also a demonstration of the industry pull through that has evaded swathes of Australian innovation.
The disconnect is part of the puzzle policy makers are trying to solve in a Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD) that has laid bare plummeting investment by Australian businesses in innovation.
The SERD has already proposed significant changes like national innovation missions that could include goals like net zero and a circular economy, as well as much more industry led research and targeted incentives for businesses to invest.
Stakeholders have put forward their own radical plans for change, like scientists’ proposal to levy the big businesses that don’t make substantial investments in R&D.
Professor Sahajwalla on Tuesday said significant change is needed to return Australia to globally competitive investment levels and to shift a research culture that can prioritise papers over partners.
That culture has been a blocker to Professor Sahajwalla’s personal mission to have economic “circularity as the norm”.
“That’s not how it should be, we should measure success not just in terms of publications, but in terms of problems solved,” she said.
“We need to tweak the professional incentives and to bridge the valley of death—to fund applied research pilot lines that will allow us to commercialise our work, and make sure both business and government are getting in on the party.”
Getting the breakthroughs out of university laboratories and into industry and communities then opens up even more possibilities, and should occur s soon as possible, Professor Sahajwalla said.
“We have to be open to the idea that piloting [and] trialling technologies, and putting things into practice should be done as soon as the science can be translated,” she said.
“I’m not saying it’s got to be perfect but if those piloting ideas can actually be developed further, I think this is why building those bridges in the ecosystem is so important.”
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