Re-inventing research

“You don’t have to be a brilliant student to be creative and innovative; all students and all people can do that. It’s a matter of creating an environment to facilitate opening up your mind and your heart and allowing yourself to let go; to make mistakes and take risks.”

Associate Head of Strategic Development in the School of Life Sciences Michael Wallach has been the driving force behind the Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program since it started in 2008. The unique program, between UTS and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, established a course in bio-innovation for masters and PhD students at both universities. Its aim: to teach students how to be creative and innovative in medical research.

Wallach says, “We thought, ‘Why don’t we bring our students and staff together for a joint international program, to encourage global collaboration in teaching, learning and research?’”

Since its inception, the program has attracted some of the world’s most renowned universities including the Stanford School of Medicine in the US (who signed up in 2013) and most recently, the National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, both from Taiwan, who signed on in June.

Each year, the program is hosted by a different country. This month, it will be held at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan and will be attended by five research students from each participating university along with 10 from the host institution. Here, students will work in small teams to come up with creative and innovative ideas for medical products.

Wallach says the students have free range to choose any project in the field of bio-innovation, as long as they meet certain conditions. “The first and foremost condition is they must be passionate and excited by their chosen project, because if you are not passionate and excited, you won’t succeed.

“Secondly, the ideas have to be innovative, creative, novel and potentially patentable. Thirdly, they have to be based on real, sound science. Ultimately, the innovation has to have a market and an end user that can benefit from the proposed project.”

Each student team is assigned a mentor, with relevant expertise, who assists in developing their idea. Students also collaborate with multi-disciplinary experts from marketing, finance and industrial design to open their minds to a more holistic way of thinking about science and product development. At the end of the program, they pitch their projects to a panel of experts.

Thanks to funding from a private donor, two prior research projects have been taken from the idea to proof-of-concept phase. They are a non-invasive diagnostic test for celiac disease which can be readily taken by children, and a novel bacterial-resistant catheter that would alleviate the need for contact replacement in patients. The test for celiac disease is now also a current UTS PhD project.

Wallach says much of the program’s success is thanks to those UTS colleagues who have helped develop and run the course – Program Manager Mukti Bawa, UTS: Design Innovation Research Centre Researcher Vasilije Kokotovich, School of Business Senior Lecturer Melissa Edwards and Professor David Michayluk, Science Senior Lecturer Brian Oliver and Associate Professor Loraine Holley and Innovation and Commercial Development Manager Brenton Hamdorf.

Wallach says, “It’s a great opportunity to be able to shape a research culture that is more innovative and creative.

“I think the more universities and countries that do this the more students will enter the workplace with an entrepreneurial spirit and medical research will benefit. That’s the bottom line for all of this; we want to see patients benefit.”