Submission to the Australian Research Council Industry Fellowships Consultation

This letter to the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council (ARC), written during consultation on the new Industry Fellowships schemes, warns that they may fail to support Medical Products, one of their strategic target areas. Research Australia notes the ARC’s reassurance, based on Industrial Transformation Research Program successes, does not hold: those hubs, such as the Hub for Digital Bioprocess Development, targeted manufacturing processes rather than medical products. Because the Fellowships aim to build commercialisation skills around products, proposals would likely count as medical and health research, which the ARC’s Medical Research Policy excludes. It recommends an exemption from, or relaxation of, that policy for the Fellowships.