Innovation

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For app designer and international exchange student Ewaldo Moritz Neto, UNSW’s Michael Crouch Innovation Centre is nothing short of “paradise”.

“When I first came to the Michael Crouch Innovation Centre​ (MCIC) I knew this was the place where everything could happen. All the innovation and all the good minds aiming for success are here,” says the mechanical engineering student from Brazil’s University of Santa Catarina.

“A place where you can create things and take something from zero to one? That’s paradise,” he says, describing the Centre which is an innovation hub and creative space for students to experiment, connect and showcase their ideas to corporate and industry partners.

Neto’s instincts were correct. Within just one year, he and Afonso Firmo, a UNSW environmental engineering student from Portugal, have developed Mova, an iPhone app that acts as a physiotherapy tool for patients recovering from knee reconstruction surgery.

The app works by patients strapping their iPhone to their operated knee and completing repetitions. The data is then relayed directly to their physiotherapist, allowing patients to complete their recovery at home.

“Mova guarantees that patients are correctly executing their exercises through the use of smartphone sensors,” says Neto. “Our app improves physiotherapy for each patient, ensuring an engaging experience with instant feedback on every rep.”

The students say they were inspired by their “not so cool” experiences recovering from various sporting injuries – Neto has trained in martial arts since he was six and Firmo is an experienced rugby player.

“Mova works like a game, you have your goals and in each movement you have to reach the extension range previously set by the physiotherapist to succeed,” says Neto.

The student’s idea for Mova won them the Johnson & Johnson health-tech HaTCHathon in September last year, but they say the app would have never been developed without the expertise and mentorship of MCIC’s inaugural Catalyst in Residence, Gary Elphick.

Elphick is the creative mind behind Disrupt Sports.com​, a platform specialising in the personal customisation of sports equipment and winner of Optus Start-up of the Year and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. As MCIC’s inaugural Catalyst in Residence, Elphick’s job has been to mentor students through their startup ideas.

“I’m here to help facilitate the different phases of beginning a startup, right from the ‘no idea’ phase to the incubation phase. Combined with all the benefits a university provides, it’s great to be able to give students a little leg up, just the confidence to go, ‘oh cool, I get it’.

“UNSW and MCIC offer an incredible R&D environment – I just wish I’d had access to something like this when I was at uni,” he says.

Having worked in the UK and Silicon Valley on startups, Elphick says Australia’s innovation community beats both countries hands down.

“What Australia lacks in size it makes up for in community and that networking extends globally. It’s places like MCIC that help add to those international networks of young innovators.”

Even though his Residency is coming to an end, Elphick says he’ll continue to be part of MCIC’s growing alumni community and network.

“The Catalyst in Residence works from a ‘pay it forward’ mentality, I’ll always be available to help out and give back.”

Backed by UNSW, MCIC has already seen its first cohort of 16 startups and more than 100 entrepreneurs and experts pass through Australia’s first post accelerator residence program.

Brad Furber, MCIC’s founding business leader, says the Catalyst in Residence program has successfully recruited seasoned startup founders that have graduated from respected accelerator programs.

“The MCIC Catalysts have inspired creativity and talent, and have helped turn good ideas into real and tangible products. Since opening our doors in August 2015, the MCIC has generated more than 30,000 engagements with end users. As we look into 2017, our network is generating more viable projects likeMova, and demand is growing exponentially,” Furber said.

Meanwhile, Neto and Firmo are in the final stages of being accepted into the HCF Catalyst Startup Program, an intensive 12-week accelerator worth $50,000, followed by a three-month mentored incubation period to further develop Mova.

“The HCF Startup Program will allow us to have Mova professionally validated. We want to get this app in every physiotherapist’s hands because we know we can help a lot of people,” Neto says.

“When you are bitten by the entrepreneur bug you don’t have a choice, you have to validate your idea and that’s the path I’m going to travel. This is what makes me feel alive, and MCIC is the place that will give me the traction that I need to succeed.”

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A group of UNSW undergraduate students has defeated 24 teams from around the world to take out the top gong at Harvard University’s annual biomolecular design competition, BIOMOD.

The six engineering and science students, known as ‘Team Tiny Trap’, received the Grand Prize for their research to develop new ‘DNA origami’ vessels (building structures on the nanoscale using folding DNA) to deliver molecular cargo.

The structures have the potential for more targeted drug delivery to cancer cells to reduce harmful side effects and treatments such as chemotherapy.

The team, the only entrant from Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, also took out four other awards at the competition. They placed first for their project website, presentation and YouTube video and third in the audience choice award.

UNSW has had a respectable strike rate over the three years it has entered BIOMOD, taking out the Grand Prize in 2014 and placing in the Gold Category last year.

Team Tiny Trap was made up of Abi Prakash, Jackson Nexhip, Sabrina Rispin, Ralph Bulanadi, Wendy Chen and Boe Lin.

The team was mentored by Dr Lawrence Lee from UNSW's School of Medical Sciences, along with several of his PhD and honours students from the UNSW EMBL Node for Single Molecule Sciences.

Dr Lee said the competition exposed students to the excitement of innovative scientific research.

“Every year these talented undergraduate students are invariably surprised by the enormous amount of work required to undertake a truly innovative research project, and the intensity required to do so in a very short time frame,” said Dr Lee, who is based at the EMBL Node for Single Molecule Science.

“For them to perform so well in these circumstances while juggling their full-time university commitments is a testament to the calibre of students at UNSW. Hopefully we can continue to inspire the best and brightest through these kinds of initiatives.”

The team travelled to Harvard thanks to support from UNSW Engineering, UNSW’s Science's School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, EMBL Australia Single Molecule Science, NSW Trade and Investment and the UNSW student group Arc.

Targeted drug delivery can be broken down into three steps:

1. Loading up a vessel with a molecular payload, such as a drug.
2. Tagging the vessel to allow it to seek a specific target cell.
3. Releasing the drug right where it needs to be.

The first step is the hardest to conquer and the one that Team Tiny Trap focused on for the BIOMOD competition.

Scientists have already designed vessels that can be loaded with molecular drugs to target specific cells and open where they are needed. However, they all rely on attaching the drug to the inside of the vessel – an incredibly difficult process likened to "catching a moth in a matchbox" without the luxury of being able to control when the box opens and closes.

To solve this problem, Team Tiny Trap designed an origami structure that folds strands of DNA into different shapes that can automatically capture molecular cargos using a spring-loaded mechanism like a mouse-trap.

The work not only makes the drug loading and delivery process more efficient, it also provides valuable insight into the mechanical capabilities of spring-loaded nanostructures. 

Watch the video to see the system in action.

See a full list of winners from this year’s competition here.

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A pilot micro-factory that safely transforms toxic electronic waste (e-waste) into high value metal alloys is soon to be unveiled at the University of New South Wales, offering a unique low-cost solution to one of the world’s fastest-growing waste burdens.

The breakthrough new process, invented by UNSW ARC Laureate Professor Veena Sahajwalla, recovers the considerable wealth of resources embedded in e-waste while overcoming the challenges of toxicity and the often prohibitively high costs of conventional industrial-scale recycling.

Professor Sahajwalla’s solution will enable the safe, cost-effective ‘mining’ of e-waste stockpiles locally, anywhere in the world.

The US$1 trillion global electronics industry generated about 42 million tonnes of obsolete equipment in 2014, a potential loss of some US$52 billion worth of embedded resources, according to a recent United Nations Environment Program report.

Although e-waste contains a range of valuable metals, it is especially challenging to recycle due to the presence of toxins and the complex mix of materials. Currently, large volumes of e-waste are exported from industrial economies like Australia to developing nations, where hand processing to recover metals exposes poor communities to dangerous contaminants.

“The world urgently needs a safe, low cost recycling solution for e-waste. Our approach is to enable every local community to transform their e-waste into valuable metal alloys, instead of leaving old devices in drawers or sheds, or sending them to landfill,” said Professor Sahajwalla.

Professor Sahajwalla uses precisely controlled high-temperature reactions to produce copper and tin-based alloys from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs), while simultaneously destroying toxins. A programmed drone is able to identify PCBs from within crushed e-waste, and a simple robot is used to extract them, overcoming the risks of contamination, before the PCBs are fed into the furnace.

“A tonne of mobile phones (about 6,000 handsets), for example, contains about 130kg of copper, 3.5kg of silver, 340 grams of gold and 140 grams of palladium, worth tens of thousands of dollars.

“We already understand the value of sourcing green energy from the sun, similarly we can source valuable green materials from our waste. ‘Mining’ our waste stockpiles makes sense for both the economy and the environment,” she said.

Until now, safe e-waste processing has been restricted to high-cost industrial-scale facilities with very large furnaces, leaving many communities across Australia, and around the world, without a viable solution. CleanUp Australia estimates almost 90 per cent of the four million televisions and three million computers Australians buy each year will end up in landfill.

The new micro-factories are suitable for mobile use: they can be set up in containers and transported to waste sites, avoiding the huge costs and emissions of trucking or shipping e-waste over long distances. Likewise, they promise a safe new way for poor communities in developing nations to generate an income from the production of metal alloys.

The e-waste solution will be showcased at UNSW’s Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT), directed by Professor Sahajwalla.