ABI hosts $20m applied doctorate launch

Minister Shane Reti left the Auckland Bioengineering Institute buzzing after meeting researchers working on some of the university’s most innovative medical technologies.

The Minister, whose portfolios include Science Innovation and Technology, and Universities, chose the Auckland Bioengineering Institute’s Cloud 9 medtech spin-out hub to launch the Government’s $20 million applied doctorate scheme.

The scheme will fund up to 30 PhD students a year over five years and will be hosted collaboratively by Auckland, Victoria, Otago and Massey universities. Researchers will spend time working with industry and business, and will gain hands-on experience with essential commercialisation skills like project management and finance.

Reti said the opportunity to visit ABI early-stage medtech companies and to talk to the scientists leading them was valuable for him as a minister.

“You get a sense of the passion of the people working here when you are on site that you don’t get out of a booklet or an annual report,” he said.

“For example, the Alimetry people – that’s amazing. Who knew the gut would generate electrical signals similar to an ECG, and that by wearing a device on the outside you can interpret those signals and have a first stage understanding of some of the clinical problems people have with gut motility?”

Reti had briefings with Waipapa Taumata Rau Vice Chancellor Professor Dawn Freshwater and ABI’s Professor Merryn Tawhai, Dr Diana Siew and Distinguished Professor Sir Peter Hunter. He also checked out work going on with the JunoFem pelvic floor training device, and the Digital Health Navigator for chronic disease project.

“It’s very clever, particularly the studies around glucose management and diabetes. I was able to see that enthusiasm, that sense of reaching to a new horizon, of translating research into applications that will actually make a difference in people’s lives,” Reti said. 

“And the question in my mind is ‘How can we help?’ Where do we need to be in the road; where do we need to be out of the road?”

ABI director Merryn Tawhai said the applied doctorate scheme, with its focus on collaboration between universities and industry, and on preparing graduate students more broadly for moving into industry, was a reinforcement of principles at the core of the Auckland Bioengineering Institute’s way of working.

“We have already run a very successful doctoral training programme in medical technologies and we see great synergies with the new applied PhD scheme. We are excited to see this approach spread more broadly to other disciplines and in partnership with other universities. And it can only be beneficial to have more connections with the new Public Research Organisations and with industry.”

Freshwater “warned” the minister the scheme was likely to be so successful that universities would soon be back looking for more PhD students to be funded.

And Reti didn’t dismiss the idea. “I’m up for that,” he said.