News

In September 2019, two outstanding PhD candidates – Ghazala Naureen from the Department of Medicine and Jing Cai from Melbourne Dental School – were awarded University of Melbourne travel scholarships to attend the International SPARK Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship training course in Sydney.

Assoc. Prof Laura Downie's SPARK team was selected to represent SPARK Melbourne at the inaugural SPARK Global pitch session in Taiwan in July 2019. Team member Dr Ruth Park-Jones attended on behalf of the team working on  a point of care medical device for dry eye diagnosis.

Associate Professor Laura Downie from the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences represented SPARK Melbourne at the Life Sciences Innovation Expo held as part of the SPARK Global conference in September 2019.

SPARK Melbourne alumni Dr Matias Maturana attended  the Med Tech Conference in Boston as part of the MTPConnect delegation in September 2019.

Applications are now OPEN for the 2020 SPARK Melbourne program and close on Mon 24th Feb at 5 pm.

Hear what our SPARKees say about the SPARK program.

SPARK Melbourne had its first meeting for 2019 in March where it was announced that Dr Lauren Ayton would co-direct SPARK Melbourne with Professor Darren Kelly. At the meeting mentors were assigned to SPARK teams and worked with the SPARKees to discuss and refine their project milestones.

Invitation to 5th Annual SPARK Global Meeting, Sydney 2019

The team from Accelerating Australia is thrilled to be running their national Life Sciences Innovation Expo in Sydney, as part of the SPARK Global conference 2019!

SPARK Melbourne teams pitched their projects at the inaugural SPARK Melbourne meeting in December 2018 and received critical feedback on their developmental plans and proposed milestones from internal and external academic and industry advisors.

SPARK Melbourne had its first meeting for 2019 in March where mentors were assigned to SPARK teams and worked with the SPARKees to discuss and refine their project milestones.

The founder of the SPARK program, Professor Daria Mochly-Rosen from Stanford University, visited Melbourne in November 2018 and met with the Faculty’s senior leadership including the Dean, Professor Shitij Kapur.

SPARK Melbourne – a 12-month program to upskill researchers in the early stages of commercialisation with milestone-based funding and mentoring – kicked off in November 2018 with a boot camp for six teams from MDHS.

In July this year, two outstanding MDHS researchers – early career researcher Dr John Karas (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics) and PhD candidate Lisseth Burbano-Portilla (Florey Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health) joined 26 PhD candidates, post-doctoral researchers and clinicians from around the world in attending a 14-day International SPARK Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship training course in Berlin.

Two MDHS researchers will soon be on their way to Berlin after being awarded University of Melbourne travel scholarships for the SPARK Global program for emerging biomedical entrepreneurs.