Why the University of Sydney is one of the 15 ‘fast moving’ research unis

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott explains why his institution is one of the 15 ‘fast moving’ research universities.

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott. Picture: Jane Dempster

Universities are doing the heavy lifting to keep Australia’s investment in research and development above water in the face of the decline in R&D expenditure by government and business, says University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott.

He particularly singles out the research-intensive institutions – of which the University of Sydney is one – for their contribution. Their achievement is extraordinary, he says. Australian universities now spend more on R&D than either the business or government sectors, a turnaround from 25 years ago when the business and government contributions far outweighed that from universities.

Scott says the University of Sydney is “very committed” to creating deep research partnerships which link its own researchers, from many disciplines, to external partners to work on solving the great global challenges. He says the university is focused on building a reputation of “being great to partner with”.

He says research success comes from successfully bringing together many moving parts.

“You have to find the right research talent and develop that talent. You’ve got to have the infrastructure. You have to have the structure inside the university between the different schools and faculties, and so forth,” Scott says.

He says the university’s biggest current research investment is its biomedical accelerator, a precinct linking the campus to the adjacent Royal Prince Alfred Hospital “which will facilitate multidisciplinary engagement around very challenging as yet unresolved medical and health challenges”.

Scott also points to a recent initiative to hire 40 exceptional young researchers from around the world through the new Horizon fellowship scheme.

“We were stunned by the quality of applications we got, domestically and globally,” Scott says. “And already the research efforts of those Horizon fellows look very, very encouraging for us.”