The research commercialisation cash is starting to flow from the Feds, with seed grants from the Australia’s Economic Accelerator announced.
The $10m program provides funding from $50,000 to $500,000 for proof of concept work, focused on projects in some of the seven National Reconstruction Fund priority areas. The first group, just announced, are in renewables and low emission tech with awards in value-add resources and agriculture, forestry, fisheries, to come.
The seed grants are a pilot to, “test and refine key processes and decisions” for the Accelerator Ignite programme. Ignite is for research at proof of concept stage.
Innovate for proof of scale which will follow is where the serious stuff starts – requiring co-contributions from a minimum one industry partner, to quality for a max $5m over two years.
Innovate “tests the usability, functionality and design of a working model and how the idea would work in a real-life scenario and solve problems for the end user.”
The first set of seed grants go to pretty much the usual suspects; with Group of Eight universities winning 16 of the 21 across the two categories. UNSW and Uni Queensland lead with four each.
