2 Into the marketplace - Annual Report 2017

Commercialisation and industry engagement. The MacDiarmid Institute aims to transform New Zealand’s economy by catalysing the growth of new export industries.

The Institute has a proud record of spinning out new high-tech companies. MacDiarmid investigators spun out three new companies in 2017, SpotCheck, Sapvax and Silventum, while recent spinouts continued their successful trajectories – gaining new investment and a successful exit.

Here, we celebrate the other dimensions in which the MacDiarmid Institute contributes to New Zealand’s high value manufacturing sector: contributing our capability to existing industry and developing business nous in our PhD graduates.

We launched ‘Interface’, an industry problemsolving challenge, in partnership with the Dodd-Walls Centre. We reached out to find some of the toughest materials-science problems faced by industry, and over 20 of our investigators and students teamed up to tackle these problems. These seed projects are delivering value to New Zealand industry with new intellectual property, new product development opportunities, and access to New Zealand’s savviest PhD graduates.