The Macquarie University Incubator offers a vibrant and accessible space for students, researchers, staff, entrepreneurs, and start-ups to work on their research or ideas that can be commercialised. The goal is to foster a growing entrepreneurial community that can share and contribute experience and resources to help foster ideas during their early stages of development.

“From the beginning, we knew we didn’t want a standard office building for this space. We wanted something truly innovative that would inspire those who work in it,” says John Shi-Nash, Director, Incubation and Entrepreneurship.

Work on the new Incubator building and programs began in mid-2016, building on the lessons learned from the temporary pop-up incubator which had been in operation on campus.

“The Incubator is one of the best examples of innovative collaboration between client, designer, contractor and sub-contractors that I’ve ever seen. Together, we delivered a visionary project within budget, on-time, and to a quality that exceeded everyone’s expectations,” says Mark Broomfield, Director of Property.

The team adopted innovative construction techniques to allow for rapid construction, utilising sustainable materials and high levels of sustainable design.

Primarily made of plywood, the building sits lightly on the ground and minimally impacts the earth and soil below it. The building also incorporates pavilions that are naturally ventilated, and uses the first air conditioning of its kind in Australia, which automatically regulates temperatures in the space depending on where occupants are located. Solar panels on the roof offset 60 per cent of power usage, and there is more than 1 km of LED strip lighting in place.

Staff, students, start-ups, and entrepreneurs can take advantage of the new event facilities, entrepreneur training programs, weekly social events, industry engagement events and co-working/hot desks.

“We hope that our University and the broader community take advantage of this incredible new space to develop their innovative ideas for the future. We want to help innovators develop their ideas and gain exposure for more opportunities including commercialisation. I personally can’t wait to see how this space is used in the coming years,” Shi-Nash says.

Tours of the Incubator will be running every Tuesday in September from 3pm. To register for a tour, contact the team at incubator@mq.edu.au with your preferred date.

As one of the leading research hubs for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) worldwide, Macquarie University and US-based VoiceBox Technologies recently announced an international research and development partnership.

VoiceBox Technologies is an award-winning pioneer of Contextual Natural Language Understanding (CNLU) and the leading innovator of next gen Voice Artificial Intelligence (Voice AI). VoiceBox is taking voice interaction from today’s NLU based systems to the next generation by employing AI techniques in advanced Semantic Language Understanding, large-scale data mining, Deep Neural Networks and advanced machine learning.

Dr Mark Johnson from the Department of Computing has been named the Chief Scientific Officer of VoiceBox Australia and will lead the VoiceBox office as a Centre of Excellence for Voice AI. Dr Johnson is overseeing the advanced labs located on the University’s campus in the heart of the Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID). VoiceBox Australia will focus on research and development of Voice AI – a next gen intelligent interface that will provide voice recognition and natural language understanding at a much higher level of sophisticated intelligence, enabling higher accuracy and usability than previously achieved.

“Macquarie University is one of the few places in the world with research strengths across a broad range of language sciences, including NLU,” said Dr Johnson, Chief Scientific Officer of VoiceBox Australia. “Together with VoiceBox, we will focus research and development efforts on next generation Voice AI, as well as continually honing expertise in speech recognition and natural language understanding.”

“Our new Centre of Excellence in Australia represents our commitment to developing Voice AI as well as exploring opportunities in the Asia Pacific Region,” said Mike Kennewick, VoiceBox CEO. “Macquarie is an elite research facility that consistently attracts and keeps top talent because of its willingness to innovate. Mark is a world class scientist – the perfect leader to execute on the VoiceBox vision to provide an intelligent interface for the Internet of Things.”

This research partnership highlights the innovation taking place in the region, as well as the potential for industry collaboration with academia. By way of employment, student placement opportunities and the identification of further joint research projects, this partnership will actively contribute to the local innovation ecosystem and deliver measurable research impact and engagement.

“In the past, Dr Johnson would have been required to relocate to the US to undertake such an opportunity,” said Barbara Messerle, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. “However, with Macquarie’s commitment to the MPID, we will see many more ground-breaking opportunities emerge.”