Office of Research and Innovation Edith Cowan University

The commercialisation arm of the Office of Research and Innovation serves as the catalyst between inventors and industry to support the creation and development of early stage technologies. The office itself is about four years old but in the last 2 years, has expanded the commercialisation portfolio from twelve projects to fifty-one. As a young commercialisation office, we strive to ensure that our processes are in line with best practice, to gradually build our research commercialisation capabilities and that we are strategic in our focus and investment and are responsive to real work problems and issues. One of the key challenges facing commercialisation at Universities is the gap in funding required to bridge early stage research, venture capital, or commercial investment. While the ultimate goal is to establish a pre-seed fund at ECU, in the interim, ECU has committed part of its internal funds to assist in bridging this gap. We have also forged relationships with key Business Angel and Venture Capital firms in Australia and overseas with the view to identifying potential sources of investment and co-investment to assist in the commercialisation of ECU’s technologies. Key to the success of research commercialisation is building effective partnerships between Universities, Industry and Investors. To forge these links with industry, engagement events such as Univation are held to showcase ECU’s innovative research outcomes and to foster collaboration and engagement. The University’s approach is differentiated targeted and welcoming of quality collaborative partners. We are proud of the world-class cutting-edge technologies developed at ECU and look forward to working with potential partners to advance the commercialisation of our innovations.

Dr Marcia Taylor
Director, Office of Research and Innovation Edith Cowan University
T: 618 6304 5401
Email: m.taylor@ecu.edu.au