2006 to 2011

Losing sight can be traumatic for any person, regardless of their age. But, thanks to a system developed by Canberra-based company Seeing Machines, debilitating diseases such as glaucoma may soon be easier to detect without exhaustive tests – enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment.

Founded in 2000 as a spin-off from the Australian National University, Seeing Machines provides vision processing systems that 'track' human faces, particularly the eyes, to detect conditions such as disease and fatigue.

The company has offices in Canberra; Brisbane; Tucson, Arizona; and Boston, Massachusetts.

Seeing Machines' TrueField Analyzer device has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and is currently in the final stage of development, with final field trials underway ahead of its expected commercial release in mid-2012.

Truefield Analyzer measures each eye's involuntary responses to light stimulus. The test is faster and more reliable than glaucoma detection products currently on the market. The system can also help detect eye conditions such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

"We started developing a more advanced glaucoma detection system after an approach from a scientist who specialises in the field at the Australian National University," says Ken Kroeger, Chief Executive Officer. Seeing Machines has also released another three products.

These are:

• faceLAB – a gaze-tracking tool used by automotive, aviation and other transport manufacturers to design efficient cabin and cockpit interiors, and by universities to undertake human factor research.

• faceAPI – a software development toolkit sold and licensed to companies that build applications requiring face-tracking.
• DSS – a 'driver state sensor' that checks the eyes of operators of heavy mining trucks for the onset of fatigue, and alerts the operator and mine dispatcher as required. The DSS also sends data back to Seeing Machines systems for benchmarking and analysis.

"While these products are quite different, the core technology is all about analysing people's eyes," says Kroeger. "As we make improvements to one product, it tends to flow through to the others."

Seeing Machines was awarded a $2 million Commercial Ready grant from the Australian Government in 2006–07 to help develop the Truefield Analyzer system. The company now has 40 employees, compared with 27 when it received the grant.

Truefield Analyzer continues to be a joint project – the university scientist owns the algorithm that measures the eye's response to the light stimulus, while Seeing Machines provides the hardware engineering and software that gathers the data for measurement.

Seeing Machines also claims tax deductions for its research and development activities under the R&D Tax Concession.

Despite considerable research and continued investment by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies around the world, cancer can be difficult to treat effectively.

However, small Australian business Progen Pharmaceuticals believes it is making headway in developing treatments that can improve the lives of cancer patients.

Founded in 1989, Brisbane-based Progen is a publicly-listed company trading on the Australian Securities Exchange and the US over-the-counter market.

As well as cancer treatments, Progen operates a bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing business through its subsidiary PharmaSynth. Combined, the businesses have about 25 employees.

The company's products include the compounds PI-88 and PG545. "PG545 and PI-88 are dual-mechanism anti-cancer drugs," says Paul Dixon, General Manager, Finance.

"This means they restrict blood vessel growth in tumours and reduce the spread of cancer cells throughout the body. It's this dual mechanism that makes them quite unique – a lot of drugs on the market may reduce the size of a tumour, but some may also actually increase the spread of cancer cells around the body."

Progen is looking at opportunities to undertake Phase I clinical trials of PG545 – an early step towards eventual regulatory approval and commercialisation. The company plans to bring the compound to market through partnerships with oncology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.

It has already signed a licence and collaboration agreement for PI-88, which is used to treat liver cancer, with Taiwanese biotechnology company Medigen.

Progen was awarded an Australian Government grant of $3.1 million in 2001–02 through the R&D Start program. In 2005, it was also awarded $3.4 million from the Commercial Ready initiative for a project completed in 2008, giving it the resources to discover and develop its products.

"The biotechnology industry is typically very resource-constrained and relies heavily on government assistance to undertake research and development in particular," says Dixon. "The funding gave us the opportunity to concentrate resources on our projects and helped with the cost of drug discovery and pre-clinical studies."

Progen has worked closely with universities and their associated companies and colleges to develop PI-88 and PG545. The company has also welcomed the Government's new R&D Tax Incentive, which provides tax offsets for a proportion of a company's eligible research and development activities.

For Newcastle Knights supporters, 2011 proved to be a rollercoaster with their National Rugby League team scraping into the finals to finish the year in eighth position.

However, for many fans, the tension was made more bearable by being able to watch their team from a new grandstand at Ausgrid Stadium.

The grandstand features a translucent roof to provide spectators with light while protecting them from the weather.

That roofing system – comprising 74 millimetre-thick polycarbonate panels – is the brainchild of Perth-based small business Everbright Roofing Systems. "Our product can span up to 4.5 metres flat and 12 curved without requiring additional support, and features superior panel strength, acoustic and thermal performance," says Steve Trower, Managing Director. "A lot of traditional products will only span up to 900 millimetres without additional support, making them more suited to home pergolas and the like."

Trower says the company received its first big break when its panel system was used to provide a skylight at the arrivals carpark at Sydney International Airport's Terminal 1.

However, the four-person-strong company may not have had a chance to make its mark without support from the Australian Government.

"For two years the business was on a knife-edge. We didn't have enough money to finance a testing program," Trower says.

In 2009, Everbright applied for and was awarded funding through the Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET) program. "We received $64,000 through COMET on the basis that we put in 20 per cent or $12,800," says Trower. "We spent the lion's share of this funding on proving the technology through testing, while we also invested in training staff and purchasing a saw unit."

In 2010–11, Everbright was awarded second-stage funding of $56,000 through COMET, matched dollar-for-dollar by the company. "We're using this funding to create a new product line based on our existing technologies," Trower says.

"The grant we received through COMET has helped us take a new design from a drawing to something we could actually develop," he adds.

The company also plans to add more staff in the near future.

In less than a decade, China has become a world leader in motor vehicle sales and production, prompting the Chinese Government to impose strict vehicle and fuel standards to maintain air quality. ¹

This has created opportunities for Perth-based engine and vehicle systems company Orbital, which is helping Chinese manufacturer Chang'an Automobile develop low-emission, four-cylinder petrol engines. The project aims to modify the existing Chang'an engine to meet a Chinese Government requirement for car manufacturers to reduce their CO2 emissions by 20 per cent over 2009 levels by 2012.

While Orbital could deliver the most of the targeted CO2 reduction comparatively easily with its FlexDI™ system, however the last few per cent were only possible with technological breakthroughs in how the system was matched and integrated with other technologies and control algorithms.

Orbital's patented air-assisted direct injection technologies enable low emission engines to run on small drops of vapourised fuel.

"In June 2011, our support team went to China to demonstrate to Chang'an that our technologies could help it meet its target," Nicholas Coplin, Orbital's Manager for the Chang'an project, says. "In July, Chang'an replicated our results in its own testing and passed a review by the Chinese authorities."

In 2009–10, Orbital was awarded around $440,000 through the Australian Government's Green Car Innovation Fund to support its research and development activity, supplementing Orbital's own $2 million-plus investment.

The grant also enabled Orbital to recruit two graduate engineers specialising in engine management system development.

"It was a sound investment in smart technologies with considerable export potential," Coplin says. "The cost of development is a huge burden on us. Cooperation between government and industry is key to developing technically advanced products in Australia."

"We are now entering the project's next stage which aims to ensure that Chang'an follows through on the technical achievement and becomes a commercial success," Coplin says.

¹ F Fung, H He, B Sharpe, F Kamakaté, K Blumberg, 2011, Overview of China's Vehicle Emission Control Program, International Council on Clean Transportation, Executive Summary, page 1.

A small Brisbane-based company aims to bring the concept of neighbourhood watch into the social networking and smart phone age with a new low-cost video monitoring service for homes and small businesses.

The service allows users to look after their property and belongings with the help of family, friends and neighbours, rather than rely on a third-party security company.

"We provide a 'social' security service – in the social networking sense," says Mark Richards, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "It's the next generation of community-powered neighbourhood watch."

Users simply fix battery-powered Wi-Fi motion-sensing cameras around their home or business. If a camera registers movement, it sends an alert via Vardr's cloud service that then informs registered people through social networks, email, push notification or text message so they can view the video and respond accordingly.

"Our business model is to sell the cameras inexpensively and charge customers a small monthly service fee to access the content and notifications," says Richards.

Vardr has five full-time developers in Brisbane. The company has outsourced its industrial design, mobile and web application development and web infrastructure management to third parties.

Richards and co-founder Geoff Smith started working on the idea in 2010, based on their access to ultra-low power Wi-Fi chips developed by Sydney firm G2 Microsystems. The chips enable the cameras to operate for 12 months on two AA batteries and upload around 7500 seconds of video.

After building their first prototype, the founders raised $250,000 to conduct a commercialisation proof of concept. They were awarded a matching $250,000 Proof of Concept Grant from Commercialisation Australia in 2010.

"As well as enabling us to proceed with the proof of concept, the grant gave us great credentials to go and talk to US firms," says Richards. "It helped position Vardr's solution as a unique and differentiated product."

Vardr has now received a sizeable investment from a large US-based partner and initially plans to market and sell its products through retailers in the US. "We plan to continue undertaking development in Brisbane and supplement that with some US resources," says Richards. "We have a roadmap of products beyond the cameras that leverage our core Wi-Fi, video and cloud-based event notification technologies."