The Ian Potter Foundation awards $2.5 million grant to ACMD
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Pictured: Artistic render of research lounge at the new ACMD building
The Ian Potter Foundation has generously donated $2.5 million towards the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD).
St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research (SVI), a partner in ACMD – has secured this substantial funding to help bring the new ACMD to life – supporting people, programs and equipment – as its physical building at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne moves closer to its expected completion in 2024.
ACMD’s vision is to accelerate bio-medical engineering solutions for people living with chronic disease, and to position Australia as a leader within this rapidly evolving global industry.
Delivered over the next five years, this funding boost will support the implementation of specialist equipment, including shared technology and training initiatives, as well as development of translational capacity through research commercialisation and quality assurance programs – fundamental elements in the Centre’s collaborative, multidisciplinary culture of knowledge exchange.
“We are enormously excited by the opportunities offered by this support from The Ian Potter Foundation, which bolsters a $2.5 million grant previously made by the Foundation in 2016. This new support will enable the nine ACMD partners to forge the unique ethos needed to foster and accelerate bio-medical engineering solutions for better medical care,” says Dr Erol Harvey, CEO of ACMD.
Strength in collaboration
ACMD offers a unique operating model that provides an opportunity to convert more of Australia’s high-quality medical research and enable increased outputs in the form of products, services and economic benefits.
It is a different type of research organisation that enables multidisciplinary teams, with more diverse skill sets than are normal in medical research institutions, to come together to work on problems defined by clinicians, patients and healthtech companies,” says Dr Harvey.
Building these strong research relationships and networks, both among the partners and more broadly, is central to the ACMD model, explains SVI Director, Professor Tom Kay.
“It is vital that we support these new ways of working, in parallel with constructing a building in which they can thrive,” he adds.
ACMD brings together nine partner organisations to work collaboratively on medical research – St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, the Bionics Institute, the Centre for Eye Research Australia, University of Melbourne, RMIT University, Swinburne University of Technology, Australian Catholic University and the University of Wollongong.
Learn more about ACMD.
Pictured: An artistic render of the new ACMD building