Collaboration and impact were the themes of the NSSN’s quarterly Sensing Industry Connect at the University of Newcastle this week.

The quarterly industry engagement event attracts a wide variety of entrepreneurs, manufacturers, designers, developers, and researchers of smart sensing and offers a chance to connect and share opportunities.  

Pro Vice-Chancellor (Industry & Engagement) at the University of Newcastle (UoN), Warwick Dawson, told the audience the university was actively involved in research, teaching and educational opportunities that directly benefited the region.

“The two key pillars for us that directly relate to the work that the NSSN does in particular are Clean Tech and Renewables, and Health and MedTech. Without a healthy population, we certainly won’t strive,” he told the audience.

Some of the attendees at the *Sensing Industry Connect* event in Newcastle. Credit: NSSN

Describing the Hunter region as a “vibrant community”, he said it was fantastic for a university like UoN to have deep connections with industry that helped it drive impact, improve lives and society.

“Finally we can’t do this without collaboration…so it’s great that we have this deep connection with this community and together we can achieve amazing things for our region and beyond.”

NSSN Co-Director, Professor Ben Eggleton, said the organisation was the inaugural innovation network in NSW.

“It was a bit of an experiment to see if the NSW Government could facilitate the universities in NSW to come together to collaborate to spread and accelerate the translation of smart sensors into solutions that would drive the economy, prosperity, productivity, and I guess this hypothesis that smart sensors would play a more vital role in our world,” he said.

“If you think about the advancement in nanotechnology, and semiconductors, and all the amazing applications that smart sensors are enabling in MedTech, healthcare, transport and the environment.”

Professor Eggleton said the Hunter was a “region of innovation”.

“From its long history in steel and coal, the city and the region itself is proving itself agile in advanced manufacturing and technology,” he said. “It’s building a very bright future for itself. And there’s a real sense of excitement and renewal every time I visit.”

NSSN Co-Director, Professor Julian Epps, said the Sensing Industry Connect events were designed to bring together universities, industry and government.

“The Newcastle and Hunter region is a great hub for innovation between the ports and the RAAF base and all the circular economy opportunities,” he said.

“It’s fantastic to see companies here like Ampcontrol, ResTech and SAPHI…it really shows that this is a region of innovation.”

(From left to right) NSSN Co-Director, Professor Ben Eggleton; NSSN Co-Director, Professor Julien Epps; Chief Commercial Officer at SAPHI Engineering, Liam Manning; Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Industry & Engagement) at University of Newcastle, Warwick Dawson. Credit: NSSN

Chief Commercial Officer at SAPHI Engineering, Liam Manning, described the business’s roots at the University of Newcastle.

“Our entire team of 13 are all alumni of University of Newcastle…it was there that this idea or vision started to form for SAPHI, which was around impact: that was our purpose as people and then ultimately that became the purpose of our company,” he said.

“That vision is something we still have, which is working with industry giants in the world’s most impactful technologies and innovations.

“We knew that the opportunity to have a massive impact would ultimately rely on going back to our institutions that educated us and bringing a lot of really clever people along on our journeys, who have these phenomenal ideas, and we couldn’t bear to see those ideas remain ideas forever.”

Mr Manning said SAPHI historically worked in mining and heavy industry before branching out into sustainability projects at UoN.

“It’s this awesome synthesis of academia, who have research and really great software skills as well, coming together with industry in order to accelerate the development of commercialisation of these technologies that shouldn’t remain in our institutions for too long,” he said.
“(These technologies) should be able to be incubated and then brought out to the community.”

SAPHI currently has three active projects at the UoN: one which is helping to make public places safer for women and children; another is developing a cognitive load training system; and another is a biodiversity monitoring project.

“I think it’s a really good model. We are starting to move away from this “we’ve got to publish papers” to “let’s actually test a lot of these ideas and bring them out to reality,” Mr Manning said.

The next Sensing Industry Connect will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November.

NSSN Sensing Industry Connect travels to Newcastle