At FW we love hearing about initiatives that break down silos within the sector to achieve greater impact. Here Dr Aeryne Lee, postdoctoral researcher in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Sydney and Athiya Azeem, final year PhD candidate in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, talk about their experiences taking part in the PERIscipe Commercialisation Award to support their research translation ambitions.
From February to June 2024, we dedicated all our time as the first cohort of Entrepreneur Leads (ELs) in the PERIscope Commercialisation Award, a pilot program run by the Sydney Knowledge Hub at the University of Sydney.
This initiative allowed researchers like us to dedicate the time to validate the market potential of our inventions, expand our network, and learn about potential commercialisation pathways for our technology. We stepped away from our research and teaching responsibilities for 3 months!
Our cohort was made up of 13 ELs from diverse backgrounds ranging from undergraduate students, PhD candidates, postdocs, and academics, all from different schools and faculties researching very different things (medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.). In addition to ourselves, there was one other female researcher, Yuan Fang, who has also been working in the medical/health space developing a drug-eluting contact lens. This made for a unique environment to learn and grow together over the 14-week program.
Once the program began we were thrown into the unknown abyss that is “commercialisation” – something us researchers had never experienced. PERIscope gave us a fresh perspective of what it means to do impactful research. We were each tasked with conducting 100 stakeholder interviews to truly understand the pain points of the people we hoped our research would help. The nature of academia has typically been technology first before we ask ourselves, “will anybody want this?” or “who’s paying for this”. Throughout the program, we learned how to test assumptions and validate ideas so that we could build technology that meets the needs of key customers, but also has real potential to succeed in the world.
Among our many combined conversations, one insight that really encapsulated the necessity of programs like PERIscope was, “while medicine and engineering are interesting, the big problems don’t get solved until they hit the market”.
So, for those of you out there working on transformative research, it is valuable to remember – no matter how amazing of an invention we create here at the university, in order to have a real-world impact it is the commercialisation pathway that will see it realised. For us, this experience transformed our outlook on what we considered important research. We now value our contributions, not just by papers and citations, but focusing on delivering innovations with real world potential. How are you planning to embrace the unknown?