ON the road to success

9 December 2016

The third round of CSIRO's ON accelerator program will fast-track the commercialisation of ten Australian innovations in a 12 week program commencing in January 2017.

The ten successful projects, of which four are from the CSIRO, include:

Throughout the program participants will be guided by expert mentors, and they will be exposed to the business and entrepreneurial skills required for a successful commercialisation process. And they will have opportunity to secure further funds and partners in a 'pitch event' to industry in April 2017.

Successful projects include new nanomaterials developed at Macquarie University which could be used across a range of applications such as the imaging of tissues in humans or in therapeutics. The material is based on nano-sized particles of ruby and diamond that are photostable free of blinking and bleaching, and have a low toxicity.

Five months ago the ON accelerator was opened to all Australian universities and publicly funded research agencies. According to CSIRO, researchers in ON have since completed more than 3,000 customer calls with industries from health to mining and minerals, defence, technology and manufacturing.

The result has been a greater uptake and engagement from industry with the solutions research can deliver – 13 new partnerships or customer agreements signed and more than $1.5 million in external funds secured by ON graduates.

Some of projects generated through ON may also benefit from the recently launched $200 million CSIRO Innovation Fund, which was established under the National Science and Innovation Initiatve to complement the ON accelerator.

More information: http://minister.industry.gov.au