The University of South Australia
(UniSA) has collaborated with Shandong Academy of Sciences (SDAS) on the
establishment of a joint laboratory in advanced lasers and sensors.
This collaboration, which is supported by
the South Australian
Government, consists of two major facilities located in Adelaide and
China’s Jinan City.
According to the announcement
made by UniSA, the South Australian Government is forging closer links with
SDAS by underpinning a 3-year collaboration agreement with all three South Australian
universities and committing A$ 900,000 to support the advancement of
collaborative research with China.
Australian and Chinese scientific and
technological resources will be integrated for this lasers and sensors research
collaboration. Combining the top-class resources of both countries will surely
boost their capacity to discover significant technological breakthroughs within
the next five years.
Their research will be focusing on the
development of advanced lasers and sensors for humidity sensing and trace
detection of toxins in food products, R&D and commercialisation of planar
waveguide-based infrared lasers and advanced gas sensors.
UniSA Deputy Vice Chancellor: Research,
Professor Tanya Monro said that the joint laboratory aims to develop original
and internationally competitive lasers and sensor products, which may lead to
the possibility for both Australian and Chinese businesses to collaborate and
innovate.
Prof Monro explained that this sector has
an enormous international potential of upgrading existing industries. At the
same time, this can eventually support the formation of new industries wherein
advanced sensor and laser technologies are crucial.
She added that by bringing both research
teams together, it is expected that invention times will be shortened. This
joint project can also leverage on the global links of both South Australia and
Shandong.
The A$ 1.6 million lab is jointly funded by
UniSA, SDAS and the South Australian Government. This will also support places
for six PhD students.
They will also establish a SDAS-UniSA Joint
Graduate Program in order to appoint supervisors, graduates, and PhD students
from both UniSA and SDAS to the facilities.
The Laser Institute of SDAS, which was
established in 1978, currently has several national and provincial labs and
research centres.
UniSA is one of Australia’s five key
technology universities and ranked in the top 100 in the world in engineering
technologies. Add to that, UniSA is engaged in the kind of advanced laser and
sensor technologies research to support the enduring success of SDAS in the
field.
This partnership between South Australia
and Shandong will be deepened by this collaboration. They are building on the Inter-Governmental
Agreement on Shandong-South Australia Science and Technology Industrialisation
Cooperation Platform, which was signed in May 2017.
