Our external engagement

The Plants and Environmental Quality Research group, lead by Dr Fraser Torpy have worked in close collaboration with Sydney company, Junglefy on the development of their Breathing Wall air phytoremediation system.

The original research focused on removing air pollutants in indoor environments using plants and has now been extended to expansion of the system’s applications to include outdoor roadside trials on the Eastern Distributor and M2, along with installations by Transport for NSW, Sydney Airport, North Sydney and Campbelltown councils. 

Disease outbreaks are not just bad news for humans, they can also severely affect agriculture and aquaculture industries. Oyster farming contributes almost $100 million to the Australian economy each year and is a cornerstone of coastal communities, but has been decimated by diseases that threaten this important primary industry. While some causative pathogens have been identified, the environmental catalysts of oyster disease remain a mystery.

To help oyster farmers to better understand and thus control disease outbreaks, Associate Prof Maurizio from the School of Life Sciences and Prof. Justin Seymour from the UTS Climate Change Cluster (C3) are working with the Department of Primary Industries.

The project unites cutting edge genomic and molecular biological tools with novel quantitative modeling analyses to identify the mechanisms behind oyster disease events. In particular, the project is looking at the role of the microbiome in oyster health and disease.

This project aims to deliver tools to the Australian oyster industry that provides the capacity to predict, manage and prevent costly disease outbreaks. Also, by identifying environmental thresholds and oyster disease danger periods, this work will underpin the development of new oyster farming strategies aimed at avoiding multi-million dollar losses associated with disease outbreaks.

NSW Health, the Respiratory Research Group at UTS and the MedTech company are partnering to train the next generation of scientists in pre-clinical drug development. 

The Respiratory Research Group, led by Prof Brian Oliver aims to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) and pulmonary fibrosis.

The group has laboratories at both UTS and the Woolcock Institute. The Respiratory Research Group has a long-standing collaboration with the MedTech company Pharmaxis, an Australian pharmaceutical research company and a global leader in drug development for inflammation and fibrotic diseases.

Over the last 15 years this collaboration has included two NHMRC industry fellowships to develop new drugs to treat chronic respiratory diseases. Since 2020 the collaboration also includes NSW Health and is focused on training the next generation of bio/medtech savvy researchers.

The ARC Ideal Hub is a partnership lead by UTS and the University of South Australia that brings together a large number of research scientists and industry partners to develop the next generation point-of-care diagnostics and detection devices.

The industry partners include Alcolizer, Minomic, Preg Tech and Surgical Diagnostics. Research at the IDEAL hub is focused on device fabrication, sample collection, analyte visibility and high-throughput approaches.

The School of Life Science’s staff members Prof Stella Valenzuela and Dr Charles Cranfield are both chief investigators at the IDEAL Hub.