New research facility to revolutionise manufacturing research

A new research facility that combines Monash University and CSIRO research could transform manufacturing in areas such as biomedicine, transport, aerospace engineering and mineral processing.

Senator Kim Carr officially opened the New Horizons Centre, which is located within Monash’s Clayton Innovation Precinct. New Horizons will co-locate and integrate more than 400 staff from Monash and CSIRO, supported by platforms for global research and teaching collaboration through state-of-the-art information communications technology, and will facilitate greater linkages with business and the community.

The facility aims to accommodate the meeting of engineering, IT and other sciences, allowing for research across departmental, faculty and institutional boundaries, said Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Information Technology, Professor Frieder Seible.

“It’s a different academic approach that will lead to a different research approach, and this is what we will see at the New Horizon Centre. Its wide range of state-of-the-art equipment and core facilities will support the highest quality research, research training and collaboration in science, engineering and technology,” Professor Seible said.

“New Horizons will change the research paradigm with world-class researchers from different and diverse backgrounds tackling some of the emerging areas of research, such as new sustainable means of generating energy, bringing the design and synthesis skills of engineers into the realm of biology and medicine, and developing new materials for drug delivery and regenerative medicine.

“We are already seeing some incredible successes: solar cells so thin they can be printed onto plastic and new materials that allow the human body to regenerate worn or diseased bones and organs.”

New Horizons will also enable the more efficient use of facilities in the Clayton Innovation Precinct, such as the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy, the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication, the Australian Synchrotron, the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium and the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.

The Australian Manufacturing Innovation Precinct’s head office will also be located at New Horizons.