Defence partnerships drive tech innovation for better safety

My career started as a medical researcher focused on virology. I spent more than 15 years researching the Hepatitis B virus and the rubella virus. And as I progressed through my career, there was an opportunity for me to undertake a Master of Business Administration at the Melbourne Business School. After completing that course, it was clear to me that I was ready to move on from research.

Moving outside of medical research into the commercialisation space was very attractive. If you look at the end-to-end process from concept to taking a product out to market, there are so many dimensions. And there are many different stakeholders to engage with.

My role as the inaugural Director of CADRE-OCE is to facilitate and foster engagement between Defence, academia and industry. With our stakeholders, we co-design and co-develop novel technologies that enable the Australian Defence Force to address CBRN threats. CADRE-OCE is an innovation integrator.

We face biological threats all the time. There are always many different respiratory viruses around. Even though the pandemic is less heightened at the moment, we're still experiencing COVID-19 infections. I've just recovered from COVID-19 myself.

Technology that can detect within minutes or hours of a person being exposed to a biological or chemical agent would be a watershed moment. Such a capability would serve as a threat warning system that raises a situational awareness and enables safe and effective countermeasures to be applied.

One of our current priority research programs, the Human Integrated Sensor System, treats the human as a sensor. Our bodies are fine-tuned to respond to biological or chemical anomalies in the environment. Our immune system has evolved over millions of years to respond to external chemical or biological threats. When we walk into a room and someone infected with COVID-19 has just coughed, for example, there's aerosolised virus particles in the air. We breathe in the aerosolised viral particles and our immune system then kicks off.

We can analyse our immune system through taking blood samples and by linking biomarkers to our biophysical traits. We undertake a series of tests that can pick up whether there are certain biomarkers that have been elevated in our body. Then we can link the biomarkers to our biophysical traits. When we're unwell or if we start to feel unwell, the way we walk changes. There are also subtle changes in our voice pattern and our cognition. If we can track all of this, the human is a very sensitive sensor.

There are different imperatives that come with working in Defence, but we’re looking for partners from many other industries. There is significant overlap with several industry sectors. Technologies developed for Defence have applications in healthcare, biosecurity, agriculture and mining. We would also be interested in engaging with partners from these industries where dual-use opportunities would be applicable.

Partnering with the academic and research community allows companies to get a sustainable competitive advantage. Capabilities and expertise provided by academic and research communities may not otherwise be readily available to commercial enterprises.