UQ Strategic Partnerships

Floating offshore wind turbines could soon be cheaper to build and access the ocean's strongest winds, with new UQ designs cutting costs by 40%. Associate Professor Wenhua Zhao and his team at UQ School of Civil Engineering have redesigned the substructure for floating offshore wind turbines, significantly cutting build costs using first-principles ocean hydrodynamics. Their new designs strip out the expense of the anchoring and substructure engineering that's kept the technology on the shelf. The scale model, wave-basin tested at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, survived simulated 1-in-100-year storm conditions while moored in water up to 200 metres deep, four times the depth limit of fixed offshore turbines. That extra depth means the turbines could access the ocean's strongest, most consistent winds, where fixed turbines can't reach. Dr Zhao's design is expected to be ready for commercial adaptation within two years. It could help power applications spanning offshore aquaculture, decommissioning ageing platforms, and future deep-sea data centres.

Australia is on track to become an affiliated country with international research powerhouse #Horizon Europe from next year.   Australian and European Union officials are progressing arrangements that would allow our researchers and industries to lead and collaborate on projects on a large scale. Horizon Europe projects tackle highly complex global challenges. Our participation has the potential to strengthen Australia’s science and innovation ecosystems as well as the competitiveness of our industries.   At UQ, we’ve been fortunate to experience exactly what is possible.   Experts from our Sustainable Minerals Institute participated under ‘third-country provisions’ in the successful ‘m4mining’ consortium that has delivered a real-time, aerial imaging system to aid global exploration and mining activities overseas and here in Australia.   Associate Professor Steven Micklethwaite and the UQ Drones Collaborative Research Platform were recruited on the strength of their reputation for industry-facing research, and their involvement culminated in test flights for the technology in regional Queensland and a final validation flight in Brisbane.   UQ is proud to have ‘runs on the board’ as a partner for Horizon-backed international projects and we are looking forward with optimism to participating in, and confidently navigating, future large-scale projects that deepen our ties with European research partners.                                                                                                                  Sue Harrison Paul Bonnington Rick Valenta Liesl Folks The Group of Eight NORCE Research Norsk Elektro Optikk AS HySpex UQ Engineering, Design and Computing

Young Minds: Our Future set out to answer a simple question: what do we actually know about the mental health of Australian children and young people? The team, led by David Lawrence at Curtin University, alongside The University of Queensland and Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research's Divna Haslam and Holly Erskine, as well as Professor James Scott and Dr Joemer Maravilla, have spent years building evidence on the mental health of Australia's children and adolescents.

A single drop of Great Barrier Reef seawater can contain thousands of different microbes. 🪸 🦠 A team led by The University of Queensland the Australian Institute of Marine Science has sequenced DNA from seawater across 48 reefs to build the first large-scale map of the reef's microbial world: over 800,000 microbial genomes, more than 500 new bacterial species, and 300,000 distinct viruses. The results now form the Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database, freely available to reef researchers everywhere The breakthrough came down to new long-read sequencing tech, says UQ's Dr Steve Robbins, turning "a puzzle with tens of thousands of pieces" into one with far fewer, even for microbes with the low-GC DNA that had long stumped researchers. UQ microbiologist Professor Philip Hugenholtz said researchers can explore what makes a reef microbiome healthy, and monitor how they respond to bleaching, storms, sediment and other stresses. The study included researchers from James Cook University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania, with the database hosted by the IMOS Australian Ocean Data Network and funded by the Queensland Government.

Could you count every bird in this picture?🐦 A new The University of Queensland-led global study has trained AI to detect birds in drone imagery, a game-changer for conservation monitoring. Led by Dr Joshua Wilson, with co-author Professor Richard Fuller from UQ's School of the Environment, the model was trained on almost 50,000 birds across 100+ species. More than 30 researchers from 11 countries were involved in the study. Birds are going extinct at rates matching Earth's major mass extinction events. The dataset and trained model are free and open-access, giving researchers worldwide a foundation to build on. Read more at the link in the comments.

Immunotherapy can be a life saver so some lung cancer patients. But for others it doesn’t help their diagnosis. The University of Queensland researchers want to know why treatment responses differ so much and use that answer to make treatment work for everyone. UQ Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences Associate Professor Arutha Kulasinghe, at UQ Frazer Institute, has spent the past few years building a picture of what separates the two groups. His team have mapped non-small cell lung cancer cell-by-cell across 234 patients in three countries, uncovering the tumour features that predict response. They've shown how individual cancer cells' metabolism shapes whether treatment works. Now, research shows a single blood test can pick up those same signals — before treatment even starts. The blood test findings, from patients treated at Princess Alexandra Hospital, were developed with Dr Aaron Kilgallon of the Queensland Spatial Biology Centre (QSBC) at Wesley Research Institute to bring these approaches together.

AdvanCell just closed a US $315 million Series D — one of the largest biotech raises for an Australia company this year. Behind the science is a partnership with The University of Queensland's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology AIBN. AdvanCell draws on AIBN's Queensland-based equipment and technical expertise to help fast-track these next-generation cancer treatments. The Brisbane-founded, clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company is developing targeted alpha therapies for cancer, including ADVC001, a Lead-212 PSMA-targeted therapy for metastatic prostate cancer now heading toward Phase 3 trials. https://lnkd.in/g_DE9mPK

Great to have Liam McNamara GAICD in the room at The REIQ LIFT Conference this week — pleased to be part of the conversation on Queensland's growth, housing and infrastructure challenges alongside property sector leaders.

Queensland's real estate sector is moving fast: proptech, changing investment models, and a market under constant pressure to adapt. At UQ, that shows up across disciplines: UQ Business School researchers examining property investment and real estate finance, and the UQ School of Architecture, Design and Planning's UQ City Impact Lab looking at urban change, housing and sustainable development alongside government and industry. This week, UQ Strategic Partnerships is at LIFT 2026, The REIQ's real estate and technology conference at Brisbane's Royal International Convention Centre, connecting with industry on where the sector is heading next. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gNSeFcVd