On Wednesday 25 May staff are encouraged to explore the group’s inaugural MP Expo on Banfield Road (opposite Verace Pizzeria off Khartoum Road). Banfield Road will be closed from 10am – 3pm and brought to life with live music, food trucks, street art, leading local employers and innovative keynote speakers.

Show your support to Macquarie’s Employability and Graduate Success team, who will be in attendance alongside representatives from Ryde Council, Optus, and other local businesses.

Come for the connections, stay for the festival!

The University received a welcome announcement recently from the Greater Sydney Commission’s Chief Commissioner, Geoff Roberts AM, that the Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID) has been selected by the Premier as one of four regions in Greater Sydney to be accelerated as a key economic and innovation precinct.

The other three are Technology Precinct, from Central to Eveleigh (including Tech Central); Westmead Innovation Precinct (including Parramatta North); and Meadowbank Education and Employment Precinct.

This is a long-awaited reward for many people across the University who have invested massive amounts of time and energy to start the precinct with key corporate partners.

As Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Engagement) Professor David Wilkinson says, “The government now sees it as something worth investing in, which is a great endorsement and payoff for all that work.

“This is a celebration of our efforts being validated; we are excited for the future of the precinct, with the University and our partners sure to benefit from increased government focus.”

Experience with other precincts shows that government focus leads to further commitment to transformative public and private investment. This could address some of the challenges and opportunities in the precinct, such as:

• Night-time economy – generating more after-5pm and weekend activity.
• Internal transport connections – we’re well connected outside the Park but getting around it is still difficult without driving.
• Attracting new knowledge-intensive companies – we have a good pedigree of corporates and are the most innovative postcode with the highest number of Intellectual Property registrations by postcode in Australia.
• Greening the precinct – we have good natural assets that need to be connected to be more pedestrian- and wildlife-friendly.

These precincts are the foundation for growing Greater Sydney’s capacity as a centre for innovation, attracting top businesses from around the world and creating new jobs and opportunities.

Macquarie Park already has a world-class university, startups, tech leaders and the community creating innovation ecosystems, with Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Rob Stokes saying, “This provides us with an exciting opportunity to coordinate projects and collaborate with the private sector.”

Minister for Jobs, Investment, Tourism and Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres says the jobs created by the acceleration of these economic precincts are a key part of the NSW Government’s COVID-19 Recovery Plan.

“These precincts will be the engine rooms for job creation, helping to train and attract the best and brightest talent who will be at the forefront of our economic recovery,” he says.

Work on economic and innovation precincts will shape the updates of the Greater Sydney Region Plan and the District Plan, as stakeholders are drawn together from across government, industry and, of course, engagement with the community, which will no doubt create unique opportunities for Macquarie. For the University, MPID provides a gateway to like-minded partners for collaboration.

The Commissioner noted that Greater Sydney must not only survive COVID-19, it must emerge stronger in the post-pandemic world. We must grab every opportunity to re-shape Greater Sydney in a way that delivers good economic, liveability and sustainability outcomes.

Macquarie will soon announce the first of three district challenges for local businesses to receive coronavirus-related research and development funding, as part of fostering ties between the University and the local business community.

Fujitsu Australia hosted the Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID) Innovation Showcase last Friday 21 September, supported by City of Ryde (main picture). Innovators including 3M, AMP Capital, Cochlear, Fujitsu, Konica Minolta, Modular Photonics, ORIX, Schneider Electric and MQ Incubator start-ups connected to unearth and explore the best of Macquarie Park’s innovation.

See how MPID is multiplying our innovation potential through connection and collaboration:

Audiology team go bush for indigenous health

Associate Professor Mridula Sharma (pictured, left) and Distinguished Professor Katherine Demuth recently led a field trip with five of their students to a remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory.

The project – ‘Indigenous ear health and phonological awareness’ – saw five Masters of Clinical Audiology students undertaking hands-on training, with the team’s findings to provide evidence-based advice for teachers and parents to enhance the language and literacy skills of Aboriginal children with conductive hearing loss.

 Stokes stoked to receive alumni award

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Engagement and Advancement) David Wilkinson popped into the office of Hon. Rob Stokes MP, to present him with his 2018 Alumni Award. Mr Stokes – who was recognised for his contribution to the environment – was unable to attend the award ceremony in May.

“As an early proponent of inter-disciplinarity in education, Macquarie powerfully influenced my contribution at the intersection of law, education, environment and planning,” says Mr Stokes.

UBar’s dessert pizza scores silver at Australian Championships

Campus Life’s Fabio De Lutiis (pictured back row, second from right) put his 20+ years of pizza making experience on show at the Australian leg of the Seventh World Pizza Championships, where he picked up a silver medal for his dessert pizza.

Fabio’s pizzas are available at the Ubar, with his winning dessert pizza to feature as a menu special very soon.

R U OK? lunch and learn  session

Our R U OK? lunchtime seminar, with guest speaker Jo-Elle Warhurst (pictured), was well attended by staff on 13 September. R U OK? Day is a national day of action dedicated to reminding everyone that any day is the day to ask, ‘Are you OK?’ and support those who may be struggling.

If you have noticed that one of your colleagues is not travelling well, here are some simple steps to start a conversation:

1. Ask “are you ok?” – help staff open up by asking “how are you going?”
2. Listen without judgement – take what they say seriously.
3. Encourage Action – urge them to commit to doing one thing that might help them.
4. Check in later – if they’re really struggling follow up soon and also encourage them to seek additional help (e.g. Employee Assistance Program).

RUOK? provide some great resources on this topic.

Teams of budding entrepreneurs and strategists converged on Macquarie for the first Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID) Hackathon on 25 – 26 February, with the task of designing digital services that could help people better access healthcare information.

A Hackathon is an intensive program in which teams develop exciting new ideas within a particular problem space. A judging panel consisting of representatives from NAB, Macquarie University and the Australian Institute of Health Innovation evaluated the outcome of digital based ideas and solutions.

John Shi-Nash, Director of Incubation and Entrepreneurship, says the event showcased some of the brightest minds, where thinking differently and collaborating to create innovative solutions were at the forefront of everyone’s work.

“Events like these really help the next generation of people looking to use technology to make our lives simpler and better,” he says.

The winning teams developed an integrated medical billing and payment service, a chat bot to track and manage healthcare needs, and a data visualisation service for healthcare companies and practitioners using virtual reality.

Those teams will now work with the MPID to commercialise their ideas.

“The MPID and NAB Hackathon gave me the opportunity to gain real insights into the healthcare industry and enabled us to develop a solution to create efficiency and solve some challenging problems through the use of technology and unique access to NAB’s API technology,” says Neil Anderson, from winning team Hello World.

“My plans for the future would be to co-found a start-up and continue with this full-time!”

To find out more information about the work MPID is doing, visit the website.

The Federal Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science Greg Hunt MP and Federal Member for Bennelong John Alexander OAM MP took time out of their busy schedules recently to visit the Australian Hearing Hub and the parts of the Macquarie Park Innovation District (MPID).

The parliamentary members spoke to Professor Dowton and other members of the University’s executive team and academic staff, as well as MPID members. The discussion was far ranging and focused on the importance of industry collaboration, recognising the unique role that MPID can play in connecting business, academia, students and the broader community.

The anechoic chamber, located within Macquarie University’s Australian Hearing Hub, was one of the showcased highlights, with our guests being suitably impressed with its functionality after partaking in an auditory demonstration of the facilities. They were also interested in the innovative use of telepractice technologies by the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre and the services offered at The Shepherd Centre.

The visit lead to some insightful and interesting conversations, with Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Corporate Engagement and Advancement) Professor David Wilkinson commenting:

“This was a valuable and productive visit for the University, symbolising and bringing to life the importance of partnership between business, universities and government. Minister Hunt and the Member for Bennelong were both very engaged in the vision for MPID and the shared benefit industry collaboration brings. I look forward to working closely with the Government in the future to make sure our innovative ideas come to fruition.”

The visit ended with a roundtable discussion with members of the Macquarie Park Innovation District.

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.”

I’ve been at Macquarie for…
Almost five months now.

In a nutshell, my job is to…
Translate Macquarie Park into a true innovation district while increasing collaboration and providing opportunities for our students, researchers and local community.

The question I hear most often in my work is…
‘What’s with your name?’ My wife Amy’s last name is ‘Shi,’ and mine was ‘Nash,’ so when we got married, it only seemed fair to join the names together. We’re the only ones with this last name on the planet (so far)!

The top three things on my to-do list today are…
1) Meet key people in the University, government and industry.
2) Work out how we can measure in real time the impact of collaboration and innovation on the University, wider community and economy.
3) Working on our plans for MPID to create maximum opportunities for collaboration, internships, entrepreneurship and incubation.

If I could do any other job at Macquarie, it would be…
‘Entrepreneur in residence,’ working with start-ups to help them convert their concepts into successful, viable businesses. OK so that role doesn’t exist yet, but it might when we get the start-up ecosystem thriving here!

Name a Macquarie staff member who impressed you last week…
Amanda Dodds from Group Marketing and the whole creative and PR team, who have really pushed the creative boundaries on the MPID project, gone the extra mile to deliver superb marketing communications in a short time frame, and generally been fun, challenging and incredibly professional.

Outside work, you’ll often find me…
Playing jazz guitar (or trying to), cooking, hiking in the national parks, sailing (when I get a ride), or coming up with the next crazy start-up idea!

I’m really looking forward to…
Seeing our family in the UK and Beijing this year as we haven’t been back for a while now.

The most amazing place I’ve ever visited is…
The high desert in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico – it’s a whole lot of nothing with beautiful pink and orange rocks under a blue expansive sky. It has space to think, very much like being on the ocean.

In ten years from now, I hope to be…
Playing better jazz guitar, still exploring the great outdoors and building something significant with great people.

Learn more about MPID and what it means for the University.