How university–industry partnerships can fix the defence innovation crisis

To maintain the security of our top-tier economy, we must change how Australia’s university innovation currently connects with industry.

To maintain the security of our top-tier economy, we must change how Australia’s university innovation currently connects with industry.

As Australia enters an era of growing great power competition, we find ourselves with an underfunded and understrength military. Despite the invest­ment in submarines, the wider military is still ill equipped for the many geo-strategic challenges that lie ahead and the reality of being underprepared for existential threats is now on the horizon.

The conflict in Ukraine and posturing in the South China Sea are highlighting the importance of advanced technologies and rapid innovation to maintain the operational edge. Many older lessons are being reinforced with the need for newer technologies and constant innovation.

How can Australia hope to defend our national interests against so many multi-domain threats? Any solution must include faster innovation cycles and better adoption of technologies, and must harness our world-leading university-sector research. To maintain the security of our top-tier economy, we must change how Australia’s university innovation currently connects with industry. Universities in the US and UK have developed highly successful partnerships with industry. All have done so by encouraging researchers and entrepreneurs to start companies and pre-negotiate standard contracts that define licensing terms applicable to all innovators. They have also established entrepreneurial programs that welcome investors and business advisers into universities, and encourage students, faculty and staff to rapidly turn innovative ideas into products and services.

Professor Adam Findlay.

We must extend these partnership approaches to university research that directly supports Australia’s growing national security needs. At Griffith University, we’re already undertaking pioneering work in national security innovation and research in areas that could readily serve as useful cases for scaling up early university-industry partnerships.

At our Centre for Integrated and Intelligent Systems, researchers are at the forefront of new approaches to cyber security and cryptography. They are working to protect critical infrastructure and prevent cyber attacks. Their work also focuses on developing advanced robotics, data analytics and AI technologies that can be used for a range of defence and security applications. Griffith’s Advanced Design Prototyping Technology Institute distinctively positions the university to support defence material innovation. Advanced micro, nano and multifunctional materials with innovative additive manufacturing processes rapidly create complex and high-precision components. Likewise, the Centre for Quantum Dynamics is researching world-leading next-generation quantum communications technologies. The Institute for Glycomics, Institute for Drug Discovery and Menzies Health Institute Queensland lead national human factors research.

These are some of many examples of the nexus between university research and innovative defence applications.

In the absence of a national approach, Griffith University is actively building relationships between our universities, Defence and industry. Our goal is to take our best research outputs to market – and better prepare Australia to withstand the surge when the geo-strategic tsunami strikes.

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Professor Adam Findlay, AO, is founding director, Griffith University Defence Network.