A Q+A with Liz Eadie of CSIRO,
Australia’s national science research agency
Liz Eadie, an Executive IP Manager at CSIRO, speaks to POF about their
key areas of focus throughout 2020, the new initiatives they are working
on to bolster Australia’s COVID-19 recovery, how they’ve been impacted
by the pandemic, their approach to commercialisation and more…
Inspire December 2020
Q: What is CSIRO’s mission
statement? 8
At CSIRO we solve the greatest
challenges through innovative science
and technology. We are Australia’s
national science agency and innovation
catalyst, collaborating to boost
Australia’s innovation performance.

We are one of the largest and most
multidisciplinary mission-driven
research organisations in the world.

Q. What new initiatives are
CSIRO working on?
In August this year, we announced
a new missions program to bolster
Australia’s COVID-19 recovery
and build long-term resilience.

The program of large-scale, major
scientific and collaborative research
initiatives will be aimed at solving
some of Australia’s greatest
challenges, focused on outcomes that
lead to positive impact, new jobs and
economic growth. These challenges
cannot be met by CSIRO alone, so
the missions program will bring
together government, universities,
industry and the community.

CSIRO will direct $100 million
annually to the co-creation of
missions, working with the brightest
minds across the research sector
and industry, to help Australia. Read
more about CSIRO’s program of
missions here.

Q. The challenges Australia
has faced throughout 2020,
including the pandemic
and bushfires, have had a
significant impact on the
way people live and work.

How has CSIRO responded
to these challenges?
CSIRO was founded 100 years ago
on a vision of science redefining
our future. We are at our best when
responding to big challenges. This
year we have been at the forefront
responding to a widespread drought,
then a devastating bushfire season,
followed by a global pandemic.

During last summer’s extreme
bushfire events, CSIRO brought
more than 70 years of expertise
in bushfire research to help with
bushfire modelling, prediction and
preparation, and monitoring recovery.

Since the emergence of the COVID-19
pandemic, we have been involved in
key research in the global response
to the outbreak. Our ‘One Health
model’, launched in 2016, allowed us
to respond to a new disease threat in
multiple ways.

Our researchers have been studying
the virus – how long it takes to
develop and replicate, how it
impacts the respiratory system, how
the host responds and how it can be
transmitted. We’re also looking to
understand its origins, how it may be
changing and how it behaves. We’re
looking at questions such as what
Solving Australia’s
greatest challenges…



Q. The COVID-19 pandemic
has brought science to
the forefront of global
discussions, do you think
we will see a marked
increase in the level of
investment in science and
technology going forward?
Today more than ever, science and
technology are vital to drive Australia’s
recovery and build future resilience.

We welcomed measures announced
under the Federal Budget for 2020-
21. Over the next four years, CSIRO
will receive an additional funding
commitment of $459 million to
address the impact COVID-19 will
have on our commercial activities.

This will allow us to continue to
deliver critical science for the nation,
and help businesses grow and
create jobs through innovation.

In September our CSIRO Futures
team released their report
‘COVID-19: Recovery and resilience’.

This report is part of a CSIRO
Futures series of reports looking
CSIRO was founded
100 years ago on
a vision of science
redefining our future.

We are at our best
when responding to
big challenges.

at how organisations can create
economic value from innovation.

‘COVID-19: Recovery and resilience’
identifies opportunities for Australian
businesses to leverage science
and technology, drive economic
recovery and resilience, and realise
positive economic impacts starting
now. The report focusses on six
sectors that realise significant
economic value from science and
technology are the focus of this
report - agriculture and food, energy,
health, mineral resources, digital,
and manufacturing sectors.

The second report in the series
‘Value of science and technology’
explores opportunities for Australia
to overcome innovation challenges
and realise greater value from
innovation investments. The
third and final report in the series
‘Thriving through innovation:
Lessons from the top’ reveals the
innovation characteristics that top-
performing ASX-listed companies
share – and they’re principles that
any business in any sector can
embrace to drive performance.

Q. What are the key
commercialisation successes
based on CSIRO generated IP?
Managing and protecting CSIRO’s IP
is important for the path to impact
for a significant proportion of our
research, and for the translation
of our research into a commercial
product. For example, the IP for
v2food played a role in the product’s
success in a competitive market.

The IP strategy was designed to
protect the product from being
copied. v2food’s first product,
a burger patty, was launched as
the Rebel Whopper in more than
440 Hungry Jacks stores around
Australia in October 2019.

One technology success that I am
proud to have been involved with is
Chrysos Corporation’s PhotonAssay
which spun out of CSIRO and
recently received the KCA Award for
Best Research Commercialisation.

PhotonAssay accurately X-rays ore to
see how much gold is contained. This
increases gold recovery by 1-3%,
worth $2 billion a year.

As an applied research organisation
with a focus on industry and
commercially applicable technology,
intellectual property is a strategic
focus for CSIRO. At the end of June
2020, we had 675 active patent
families, 320 trademark families and
82 plant breeder’s right families.

Q. What are biggest wins
CSIRO has had from IP?
Quality patents and other IP rights
continue to yield significant returns.

Our biggest win is of course WLAN.

In the last five years alone, IP has
directly underwritten $45 million of
revenue from WLAN, $22 million in
new equity positions, plus more than
$158 million in cash royalties and fees
from other technologies.

Q. What is your approach to
commercialisation? In addition to the traditional model
of licensing our technology to third
party companies, we consider
alternative commercialisation
pathways to achieve the best impact
for a technology.

For example, we can take an
ownership stake in companies that use
our technology or research. We spin-
out new, high-technology SMEs, where
we recognise the value of a technology
and bring together commercialisation
resources, management teams and
investors to create and support entirely
new companies that create new jobs
and value for industry.

We also make our research and
development capabilities or IP
available to early-stage companies
with limited resources. In these
situations, we can assign our IP to
the new company in exchange for
an ownership stake or take shares
in a company as payment for our IP
and services. These arrangements
can help a start-up company
preserve their cash resources, which
increases the likelihood that the
company will successfully reach its
goals and objectives.

Inspire December 2020
the virus is and how it spreads, and
how long it can survive.

We’re working on the development,
testing and manufacture of a vaccine
for the novel coronavirus responsible
for causing COVID-19. We are also
working with the research sector
and industry regarding the preclinical
evaluation of therapeutics, to see if
they are effective against COVID-19.

We have been involved in testing the
performance of advanced materials
produced by local manufacturers
to boost the supply of medical
equipment, including face masks,
which were needed in Australia’s
fight against COVID-19.

Our researchers, in partnership with
the University of Queensland, have
worked on refining a wastewater
surveillance system to monitor
COVID-19 prevalence through tracing
fragments of the novel coronavirus
gene in raw sewerage.

From advanced analytics, artificial
intelligence, social media data analysis,
simulation and scenario planning,
we’re helping government and industry
partners inform decision-making.

Read more about our coronavirus and
infectious disease research here.

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