The Knowledge Commercialisation Australasia (KCA) Research Commercialisation Award and People’s Choice Award were both won by the University of Tasmania (UTas), announced tonight at its annual conference dinner in Melbourne.

New KCA Chair – also announced at the event – Dr Erin Rayment, Director (Office of Research Development), University of Southern Queensland (USQ), congratulated the winners saying celebrating research commercialisation success in Australasia was imperative.

“We need to make more noise about what we do and this KCA Award is one way of shouting out about the top-level tech transfer work in all facets of research commercialisation, industry engagement and entrepreneurship that is taking place,” she said

“In this case the judges looked for projects that demonstrate originality and creative business insight, as well as those that deliver significant societal impact.”

• • KCA Research Commercialisation Award

• People’s Choice Award – is open to the KCA Conference attendees to vote on

University of Tasmania (UTas) – A Lobster Tale from Tasmania

Leveraging skills from across the University, the technology transfer unit led the reformulation a 15+ year research project in rock lobster biology to repatriate invaluable home‐grown intellectual property, and chaperone the opportunity into a newly formed Australian company, issue an exclusive Australian licence, attract $2.5M in equity investment to sustain an aligned ARC Research Hub and engage in commercial partnering. A subsequent commercial sublicense from UTAS to a third party is now proceeding on terms that will see the world’s first commercial‐scale tropical rock lobster hatchery begin production in Tasmania before August 2021.

This year’s awards are judged by commercial leaders of innovation:

• Natalie Chapman, gemaker
• Ross McFarlane, Phillips Ormonde Fitzpatrick
• Charlie Day, Office of Innovation and Science Australia
• Deb Verhoeven, University of Technology Sydney