Innovation precinct transforming industry

Lot Fourteen is leveraging SA’s strengths to create economic growth, job opportunities, and high-value careers.

Diane Dixon, state project lead at Lot Fourteen, says the innovation hub is attracting big investment and tenants. Picture: Mike Burton

In a building at the former hospital site in Adelaide there are 130 incredibly skilled artificial intelligence experts quietly working on industries of the future.

The University of Adelaide’s Australian Institute of Machine Learning (AIML) at the Lot Fourteen innovation precinct wants to revolutionise advanced manufacturing, medicine, agriculture and defence with next-level productivity gains.

AIML Director Professor Anton van den Hengel says machine learning will underpin the future of almost all industries, enabling efficiency and productivity changes to keep Australia on the international stage.

“Over the course of the last decade computer vision has gone from a mathematical research area to being the core of modern artificial research intelligence,” van den Hengel says.

“It’s the technology of the future of driverless cars, of mining, of agriculture; almost every application you can think of, this technology will revolutionise it.

“And that’s happening just in a corner of Lot Fourteen in Adelaide in a building that used to be the women’s health centre.”

The South Australian government has a vision for Lot Fourteen to leverage SA’s strengths in high-growth industries, including space, defence and hi-tech, to create economic growth, job opportunities, and high-value careers.

Together with the Australian government through the Adelaide City Deal, the SA government is investing $672m into the organisations and infrastructure of the Lot Fourteen precinct to build a “global innovation neighbourhood of entrepreneurship, research collaboration and cultural activity”.

Across the developing 7-ha site are AIML, the Australian Space Agency, the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre, the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre, and startup hub Stone and Chalk Adelaide, which is powered by FIXE, the Future Industries eXchange for Entrepreneurship.

In development for the precinct are the Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre, the Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre & Innovation Hub and the International Centre for Food Hospitality and Tourism Studies, all supported by the Adelaide City Deal.

Almost 870 people are working across the precinct so far, on the way to its target of 6000 workers and 1000 students when physical redevelopment is complete in 2028.

Lot Fourteen state project lead Diane Dixon says one in three of the businesses onsite are involved in AI and machine learning, while another one in four are in space and defence.

“Lot Fourteen is attracting investment and tenants, helping to create high-value career and business opportunities for South Australians by building on the state’s established and emerging industry sector strengths in defence, space, cybersecurity and hi-tech — all of which are growing and in high demand around the world,” she says.

“This is helping to diversify the state’s economy from its reliance on more traditional industry sectors such as mass manufacturing.”

The development of Lot Fourteen dovetails with the 10-year plan EXCITE Strategy announced in October to accelerate South Australia’s science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine research and innovation value chain.

Professor Anton van den Hengel, director of AIML. Picture: Matt Turner

AIML’s van den Hengel says the co-location aspect is important, as it builds a critical mass of skills, resources and fresh ideas.

“It also means you have water-cooler conversations and you get an idea of what is possible,” he says.

“That benchmarking is critical.

“Just to be in an environment where there are all of these companies pushing hard, pushing the boundaries, provides an incredible opportunity to be part of it and get swept along. These things are globally unique.”

Researchers are being encouraged to upskill in these critical areas, given the high demand.

He says those with a PhD in machine learning will walk into a starting wage of $250,000 a year.

“To do the extra three years to get a qualification that makes you a global expert in a field that is adding so much value means that you’re going to be drawing an incredible wage for a very long time,” van den Hengel says. “This technology is not going away. This isn’t a boom and bust thing. They’re going to get paid very well for a very long time because they can make the difference between productivity and failure.”

‘To be in an environment where there are all of these companies pushing hard, pushing the boundaries, provides an incredible opportunity’

In its 2½ years of operation, the AIML has built on the success of its predecessor, the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, to become the nation’s biggest artificial intelligence and machine learning centre.

For its research into computer vision, van den Hengel says it ranks in the world’s top three, competing with the US’s Carnegie Mellon University and the ­Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“We rank third in the world for computer vision publications in machine learning over the past decade,” he says.

“It’s a really key indicator of ­research quality.”

And that cutting-edge science has delivered real-world outcomes.

AIML developed the algorithms and machine learning that power a key technology behind medical technology company LBT Innovations.

The Adelaide-based ASX-listed company’s Automated Plate Assessment System screens pathology samples on agar plates and interprets their patterns of growth.

With AI able to recognise the imagery of common negative test patterns — screening out a majority of samples for some tests — ­microbiologists are able to focus on potential positive results.

Ultimately, this increases ­efficiency and accuracy in laboratories and allowing faster processing time for patients.

LBT Innovations chief executive officer Brent Barnes says the machine learning technology ­allowed automation.

“AIML were the core inventors of it, then it was back to us for the commercialisation of it,” Barnes says.

“Now we’re selling it around the world.

“For us it’s about translating that awesome innovation into something that could be a ­commercial success. We’d love to do something with them coming out of their research.”

AIML is also delving into optical sensors to detect space junk, ­satellites and other matter in orbit in an attempt to overcome the problem of crashes crippling operational satellites, an issue that knocks out more than one each year.

Other projects include using AI to boost early screening for rectal and bowel cancers by comparing polyps to a catalogue of thousands of previous images; building ­computer models of plants to identify robust varieties to ­cultivate for crops; and analysing traffic patterns in SA in real time to improve roads and public ­transport infrastructure in the ­future.

An additional $20m from the Australian Government Budget this year was set aside to create the Centre for Augmented Reasoning with the University of Adelaide.

Van den Hengel says Australia is well placed to overcome the “trust issue” of AI and build a brand as a reliable and high-­quality provider of autonomous systems.