Big inter-disciplinary projects are the new face of successful university research – collaborations by researchers from a range of fields working together to find solutions or to better understand the fundamental problems. These collaborations might include leading university researchers from all the STEM disciplines working with lawyers or historians or social science academics.
Monash Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise Robyn Ward cites the university’s “Securing Antarctica’s Environment Future” (SAEF) project, which she says is at the cutting-edge of interdisciplinary science: assessing the impact of global warming on the Antarctic, massing huge amounts of data, synthesising it, analysing it and considering both the policy impact and the social science impact.
“Those big teams of researchers are what you need to solve the world’s problems today,” she says. “The big collaborations are where Monash really comes into its own, because it has such a huge footprint across so many different disciplinary areas and such scale and breadth, not only in Australia, but also internationally, in Malaysia and in India.”
Monash ranks second in the Research category in the Australian Financial Review’s 2025 Best Universities rankings. The University of Melbourne ranks first in Research. Ranking equal third in the category are the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and the University of NSW.
The rankings reflect institutional excellence in research and a fundamental commitment to a breadth and depth of research effort despite the ongoing shortage of research funding.
In terms of trans-disciplinary research, Ward says another important Monash project is designed to improve the lives of people with little access to clean water. The RISE (Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments) program spans health, the environment, and water and sanitation.
With academic expertise from six Monash faculties, RISE determines how best to use nature-based solutions to provide clean water systems in shanty-towns in Indonesia and Fiji. Ward adds the program is limiting the spread of disease in these settlements, which often have little or no running water or sewerage.
Another of the university’s large research programs is based at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century. A consortium of 24 partners led by Monash, the Centre’s research shapes how Australia understands and prepares for weather in a changing climate.
The university has a strong reputation for ensuring relevant university discoveries make it to market, Ward says, adding Monash is involved in about 25 per cent of all Australian clinical trials. Researcher discoveries in the field of health and medicine, such as developments in cancer and epilepsy treatments, are evaluated in industry-supported clinical trials.
“Monash has a long track record in getting behind the researchers, understanding what they’re doing, and then working to spin the research out, which is basically making a little company that is then able to grow,” she says.
She cites Jupiter Ionics, which markets a technology developed by Monash materials chemist and electrochemist Doug MacFarlane: an electrolytic cell that can produce carbon-neutral green ammonia for use in crop fertilisers.
More than $100 million annually is funnelled to university research projects in industry co-funding and Monash supports about 20 little spin-out companies, Ward says. A specialist team, Monash Innovations, assists researchers with filing patents, setting up small companies and seeking venture capital to support research-based businesses.
The university recently opened a hub in the US city of Boston to take advantage of its proximity to a concentration of biotech companies, along with world-class universities and research institutions. “Boston is a big hub internationally where you meet lots of other investors in companies, and also lots of other companies that are starting to grow,” Ward says. “So it’s a great incubator space, meeting place and development space for new inventions and new companies.”
From a background in cancer research and medical doctor herself, Ward says she hopes the dramatic breakthroughs in cancer treatment that emerged during her research life are matched by similarly weighty advances in treatments for intractable neurological conditions such as dementia, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease.
A better understanding of the human neurological system is essential, she says, and Monash will continue to nurture foundational research by neurologists and neuroscientists – the young PhD students and early career researchers now trying to piece together the neurological puzzle. “So in 20 or 30 years from now,” she adds, “we’ll have the same opportunities for new treatments of neurological conditions.”
At the University of Sydney, Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Julie Cairney says sufficient funding for foundational blue-sky research continues to be essential.
“We have excellent researchers with great projects, so there’s still the capacity for us to be able to find that support,” she adds, noting that with changes to the national competitive grants programs, fears have risen that foundational research could lose out to more applied research projects.
Statistics show that while Australia does well in terms of foundational research, it lags other nations in translating excellent research into marketable products or services. “There’s a big gap between the funding that’s available for research and what is needed to take something out to market,” Cairney says. “We need to make sure that we’ve got the right kind of support around that translational end as well; so we need to support the full pipeline, all the way from basic research through to things that are used.”
To fill the gap between invention and market, the university has set up a $25 million Pre-Seed Launch fund to help researchers navigate the road to commercialisation. The Fund potentially provides investment funding with a long-term horizon. “We’re making contributions to bridging the gap,” Cairney says, adding early-stage university financial support can help bring in external funding.
DAC Laboratories, she notes, is a university spin-out company that produces pure carbon dioxide captured from the air for use in carbonated drinks, water treatment, food processing and industrial applications. “We have made a direct investment in the company at an early stage so they can then potentially raise venture capital,” she adds.
The Fund made a follow-on investment in Kinoxis Therapeutics, a university spin-out company heading down the road to successful commercialisation. The company has a developed a drug that helps calm aggressive dementia patients without sedating them, potentially lengthening the time they can be cared for at home.
Phase 2 trials are next. The company in 2023 announced a partnership worth up to $273 million with global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim to develop treatments aimed at improving the quality of life for people living with psychiatric disorders.
Meanwhile, Sydney University’s OurFutures Institute has produced on online modules with cartoons to teach high school students about the dangers of vaping. Now used in 800 or so schools, the modules’ clinical trials have proved to be extremely effective and to reduce the likelihood of an adolescent vaping by 65 per cent a year after completing the program.
Sydney University was extremely strong across the fields of medicine and health, Cairney says, along with strength in nanoscience and quantum physics, robotics, aerospace and mechatronic engineering.
One of the core philosophies at Sydney, she adds, is to take care to incorporate research in the provision of a comprehensive undergraduate and post-graduate education. Most of the university’s academics spend at least 40 per cent of their time teaching, along with 40 per cent on research and 20 per cent on contributions to the community.
“The thing that attracts students to a research-intensive university is that they’re in this environment where they are being taught by leading scholars,” she says. “We have a research environment where students have the opportunity to learn from leading scholars. That’s the model of a great research-intensive university worldwide.”
At the University of Queensland, excitement is growing about the potential of financially successful research-based spin-out companies after Sanofi this year paid more than US$1.15 billion ($1.77 billion) for Vicebio, a company that developed next-generation respiratory virus vaccines using Molecular Clamp technology originally developed by UQ researchers.
The deal was a substantial demonstration of the potential value of university research, says Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) Sue Harrison.
Finding sufficient research funding has always been difficult, she adds, and balancing the needs of fundamental and applied research has become a tight-rope act for university leaders.
“It’s really important that we maintain a balance between blue sky research and applied research,” she adds, “because, of course, blue sky research gives us the applied research of the future.”
Work is needed to foster an alignment of universities, industry and government to work together to support impactful research, Harrison says, adding that universities have to work hard to enable fundamental research to sit alongside applied research in research programs.
“We continue to work in therapeutics, biosciences, and bio-medical sciences very strongly,” she adds. “We have some really interesting projects going on around gene cell therapies with the new Cooperative Research Centre.”
A $238 million industry-led research centre, the CRC is intended to accelerate industrial-scale manufacturing of regenerative therapies for illnesses including heart disease, cancer, arthritis and dementia.
The university encourages trans-disciplinary research, she adds, noting a project in the fields of urban design and sustainable infrastructure.
Researchers from the schools of architecture, design and planning and engineering contribute to the research work, which takes into account both economics and liveability. “We are rethinking urban spaces from a sustainability point of view,” Harrison says, adding the crossover of disciplines allows a more complete picture of the project. “I think that’s something which universities are really good at.”