ANU has launched translational research investor, Significant Capital Ventures, again. The university first announced SGV in 2016, in partnership with Canberra property developer Hindmarsh and support from the University of Canberra and the ACT Government.

In its expanded incarnation, SCV includes Deakin University, UTS and the University of Wollongong with the partners committing to a $50m capital goal. It will, “provide seed investment to companies translating academic research into applied technology,” ANU announced yesterday.

Translational funding, on the lines of the Medical Research Future Fund, is now the go. The Group of Eight and science lobbies suggest non-medical researchers also need new resources to take their work out of the lab and onto the market. Good-o, but why not, a learned reader asks, use the cooperative research centres model, including the CRC P which apply research to specific industry problems. “If something is working, popular and oversubscribed, it would be much better to back that program than invent a new, additional, sub-par one,” the LR remarks.