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Filed Under: People of the Precinct, PROJECTS

Social enterprise and sustainability a focus for the Precinct

Intergenerational Care can transform aged and childcare models

With our vision to be a Precinct of ‘people transforming lives’, our mission goes beyond simply doing ‘great technology and good business’ – we’re committed to ‘doing good’.

Intergenerational care uniting young and old

ABC television’s “Old People’s Home for 4-Year-Olds”, brought smiles to faces young, old and in between, as it demonstrated how rich and beneficial the connections between generations can be.

Emeritus Professor Anneke Fitzgerald, a health management research expert, oversaw Griffith University’s five-year Intergenerational Care Project and was involved in both pre and post-production for the popular docuseries.

With a small team of volunteers, she’s now established the not-for-profit Australian Institute for Intergenerational Practice (AIIP), based at Cohort Innovation Space in the Precinct, to address the gaps between the identified benefits of intergenerational care and current practices in aged, child and community care.

“Through AIIP we seek to educate, train and support care providers to formalise the beneficial intergenerational activities that occur in families and communities within care settings, using evidence-based practices, which are guided by research,” says Professor Fitzgerald.

“By learning with and from each other, these activities generate inclusive, age-friendly communities for children, teenagers, older adults, the workforce, volunteers and the wider community.”

Intergenerational program activities include gardening, cooking, arts and crafts and other play and learning opportunities

With an ageing population – the number of people in home care has tripled in the last decade, while numbers in permanent residential aged care increased by 13%, according to GEN Aged Care data (2019-20) – there is a significant focus on improving the wellbeing of older people, particularly in light of major issues spotlighted in the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and ongoing concerns during the pandemic.

Purposeful intergenerational activities have been proven to give older people a sense of purpose and improved mood; reduce or delay cognitive and physical decline, including dementia; reduce social isolation; enhance dignity and encourage older people to remain living at home for longer.”

Of course, the benefits run both ways, with children improving pro-social behaviours of sharing, helping and cooperating while gaining increased confidence and communication skills and evidence showing a decreased likelihood of juvenile delinquency later in life.

AIIP Interim CEO Emma Woods (left) with Emeritus Professor Anneke Fitzgerald

AIIP Interim CEO Emma Woods believes the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct provides a unique opportunity, through co-location of a new aged care facility, including a training centre, close to the innovative early learning and child development ‘living lab’, being established in the Proxima development.

“The co-location, together with opportunities to have input into the design of both facilities, will hopefully enable us to be able to demonstrate best-practice in intergenerational care,” Ms Woods says.

“To be able to work closely with paediatric researchers and early childhood educators in Proxima, together with being involved in training of the next-generation aged care workforce, will enable us to easily translate research and pilot programs that can then be expanded across Australia.

Our vision is to benefit the whole community by reducing ageism and the care burden in society, while improving satisfaction for care workers and volunteers.”

Disrupting the charity sector with micro-philanthropy

The Little Phil team

In 2017, Little Phil’s CEO and Co-founder, Josh Murchie, saw the dire need for a better way to support charities after returning home from a volunteering mission in Peru.

With the simple mission at inception, “charitable giving is broken, we’re going to fix it”, Little Phil was born.

“Charities and not-for-profits are failing to keep up and engage younger generations, albeit the most socially in touch,” says Josh.

I set out to create the platform I wanted to use. The main difference with our platform is trust and transparency, alternative fundraising streams, and a central focus on donors rather than just charities.”

Little Phil eliminates the issue of third-party fundraisers taking a big share of donations, rigorously vets charities to ensure that only genuine causes can raise funds via the platform, and then provides access to their donor base, corporate fundraising and new web3.0 fundraising streams and opportunities such as crypto and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).

According to Josh, who was a founder of Griffith University’s Entrepreneur’s Club as an undergraduate and then Masters student, almost all crowdfunding platforms are transactionally focused, without nurturing the donor experience for a lifetime impact continuum.

“The Little Phil platform provides our charity partners with the tools to engage and build long-lasting relationships with their supporters and puts donors at the heart of what we do.”

The last quarter of 2021 saw the team move into Cohort and launch the Beta version of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative ‘Company Giving’, an alternative to outdated and under-subscribed workplace giving programs.

They say 3.3 million workers are employed in companies with workplace giving programs, yet only five percent choose to give in this way. At the same time, competition to attract and retain skilled workers is tight, with many potential employees, along with customers and corporate partners, looking to a company’s social impact as a key factor in decision-making.

“We’ve created a plug and play ecosystem that lets companies individually empower their employees whilst displaying their social goodwill to the world,” says co-founder Craig Gillam.

“Rather than giving a lump corporate donation once a year, we enable companies to diversify this donation amongst team members while retaining relevant tax benefits and displaying goodwill to customers and investors, and while their team members give to what they care about.”

Telco amaysim (Optus), Australia’s fourth largest mobile services provider, has partnered on the launch.

Another big focus will be on what they believe is their world-first move into utilising NFTs to fundraise for multiple causes. An NFT is a digital asset representing real-world objects like art, music, in-game items, and videos bought and sold online mainly using cryptocurrency and mostly encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos.

Little Phil’s first project saw it partner with Korean music-star DJ Soda, along with NFT digital trading platform Xillion, to deliver to the market a digital art piece valued at AUD$2.8 million with 12.5 percent (an estimated AUD$350,000) of this total to be allocated to charitable causes.

Surrounded by innovators in the Precinct, the Little Phil team, many of whom are Griffith alumni, feel right at home.

“Being a part of the GCHKP and Cohort community allows us to be amongst other peers solving complex problems and pulling off remarkable goals of their own,” says Craig.

Tymlez drives Cohort sustainability through blockchain technology

ASX-listed Tymlez is on a mission to transform data into sustainability by enabling transparent, auditable, and verifiable decarbonisation – and it’s thinking global while acting local to create the city’s first energy community.

TYMLEZ CEO Daniel O’Holloran speaks to media to announce the company move to the Precinct in August 2021

Having moved its Australian HQ into the Precinct in mid-2021, it’s moving its mission forward by recently joining the Australian Hydrogen Council (AHC) to offer a solution to guarantee the origin of green hydrogen and further support organisations to meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets, while also focusing on sustainability at its homebase at Cohort.

Utilising Behind-The-Meter energy monitoring devices capturing site-wide energy usage, the TYMLEZ Smart Energy Data Solution is being deployed across Cohort’s buildings as part of a pilot with the Queensland Government, allowing access to real-time consumption data, powered by blockchain technology.

Read more

February 4, 2022 By Kathy Kruger

Filed Under: BUSINESS, HEALTH, PROJECTS Tagged With: child health and development, childcare, Evans Long, Proxima

Precinct to be home to early learning and child development ‘living lab’

Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development Hon Steven Miles MP is joined by Matthew Evans from Evans Long developments to turn the first sod on the Proxima development

As the first private development in the Precinct’s Lumina commercial cluster, the $80 million Proxima building will offer a novel collaborative space for paediatric researchers, clinicians, teachers, early childhood educators, and parents, in a model that puts all children at the centre.

Up to 30 Griffith University researchers and PhD students will develop innovative programs and early interventions for young children, including those with additional needs, through co-locating with a new early learning centre and paediatric clinicians from Gold Coast Health in the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct.

Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development Steven Miles was joined by Minister for the Environment, Great Barrier Reef, Science and Youth Affairs Meaghan Scanlon, Griffith University Vice Chancellor Professor Carolyn Evans, Gold Coast Hospital and Health Services Board Chair Ian Langdon, and representatives of developer Evans Long to turn the first sod on the new Proxima development, which will be focused on child health and development and is set for completion at the end of 2022.

The Deputy Premier and Minister Scanlon said founding tenant Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure would create a unique environment that will include support for children with special needs. Approximately 25 percent of the children who will use the inclusive centre are anticipated to have additional needs.

“This is an Australian-first, an early learning centre with in-house access to allied paediatric health and research professionals, and I’m so pleased they have chosen to establish within Lumina at the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct,” Mr Miles said.

Around 180 construction jobs will be created and when fully occupied, 900 health and teaching jobs will be based at Proxima, providing access to a huge range of services for families.”

“Children will have access to the expert care that they need within a familiar, fun and caring environment at their early learning centre, “Minister Scanlon said.

Artist impression of the Proxima development

Professor Evans said co-location provided the perfect basis on which to establish a Centre of Excellence in Early Childhood Education.

“The Centre brings together interdisciplinary teams across Griffith’s Allied Health disciplines and Early Childhood Education to embed a model of research-integrated inclusive childcare education,” Professor Evans said.

“This will be a place in which every child can grow and learn together.”

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Mario Pinto said a ‘living lab’ provides a rare and valuable opportunity for researchers and would build on the university’s existing strengths in education and autism research.

“This is all about collaboration, leveraging complementary skills, building on strong but flexible foundations as a springboard to a whole new level of research translation”.

“It is a perfect example of what our Research and Innovation Plan seeks to achieve with research impact, and what we are striving to create in the Precinct through integration.”

Autism Centre of Excellence researchers

Associate Professor David Trembath, who will lead an allied health team of researchers from the university’s Menzies Health Research Institute Queensland, said the model would benefit both children with additional needs and the broader pre-school population.

“We will be looking at each child individually, rather than thinking of them through the lens of their diagnosis,“ Associate Professor Trembath said.

“It is all about identifying each child’s strengths, preferences, and interests and working with these. This is how all kids like to learn and doing so in an inclusive environment like this is good for all kids.

The close relationship with the diagnostic clinics at Gold Coast Health will also lead to children’s needs being identified in a timely way, so we can intervene at the earliest opportunity when it is most beneficial.”

L-R Evans Long co-founder Dirk Long with Lauren and Damian Hall andSanctuary Early Learning students

Sanctuary Early Learning Adventure Co-Founder, Damian Hall said the new state-of-the-art facility would cater for up to 400 children and they would have their own specialists embedded.

“Proxima will help relieve more of the pressure on parents also as it will eliminate most excess travel in transporting their children to and from medical appointments,” Mr Hall said.

Technology will be a focus for some educational supports, but equally researchers will learn practically through observing interactions between educators and children.

“For some children, technology will open new windows into how they think and learn, for children with minimal language it may open a new door to communication with their peers, parents, and teachers,” Assoc Prof Trembath said.

“We are working on offering training for Sanctuary’s staff and we will certainly be learning from them, and of course from the children themselves, so we can blend the art and science of early childhood development together.

The Director of the Menzies Health Research Institute Queensland, Professor Paul Scuffham played a key role in developing the concept.

“This exciting opportunity will allow for multi-year longitudinal studies as well as rolling evaluations in real-time that we will be able to quickly innovate into new programs,” Professor Scuffham said.

Griffith researchers will also be drawn from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research (GIER) and the University’s specialised Autism Centre of Excellence.

July 22, 2021 By Kathy Kruger

Filed Under: BUSINESS, PROJECTS, Research, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: ADaPT, David Lloyd, Digital Athlete, Duncan Free, film industry, Sports science

Hollywood meets Health – science, sport and film industries combine to create Digital Athlete

Australian basketballer Maddison Rocci in the Myriad Studios specialised scanning suite

Hollywood, meets science, meets sport thanks to an innovative research project in the Precinct that is bringing the Gold Coast’s industry strengths together.

Biomechanical engineers at Griffith University’s Centre for Biomedical and Rehabilitation Engineering – with support from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and the Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) – have turned to film industry 3D animation and visual effects experts to develop a proof of principle of a world-first Digital Athlete.

We take a sneak peek of the process – and watch the completed video below.

The film industry has been animating action with increasing precision and life-like quality over recent decades, building on motion capture technologies that were originally developed by biomechanical engineers.

Ask 20-year veteran of the Gold Coast film industry Duncan Jones of Myriad Studios, and he talks of a constantly innovative and evolving industry from the earliest days of silent movies, always making the unbelievable appear believable in the quest for movie magic.

And now creatives across film and science are combining in a new application of the latest digital technology – the Digital Athlete project brings the two streams of expertise together in the name of sport to create digital twins that are more exact than ever before.

“It’s very complimentary to the work we do, but also different and very exciting,” Duncan Jones says.

“The art of filmmaking is make-believe – nothing is ever real – but the Digital Athlete is blending our technologies with biomechanical science to create something that is entirely realistic.

It’s a fantastic cross-collaboration.”

Duncan Jones with Maddison Rocci in the scanning suite

Having started out specialising in location selection for film sets, Duncan and his team of six have evolved to digitally capture locations in precise detail and create digital doubles of cast, backgrounds and props to support camera alignment and lighting on set, and animation and visual effects in post-production.

He’s worked on well-known Hollywood productions including Thor:Ragnarok, Aquaman and Paramount Pictures’ recent Netflix release Love and Monsters, which received an Academy Awards nomination for visual effects.

Recently, in their high-tech mobile studio set up ready for filming of the new Ron Howard biographical drama Thirteen Lives, they captured a high-fidelity model of Australian basketballer Maddison Rocci, using 90 cameras set up to capture different angles, in order to construct layers of detail in 3D.

Body scan data is then fed into a complex animation being developed by media producer Stefano Pizzolato of Naughty Monkey Studios, which combines the external data with a personalised biomechanical model of the internal mechanics of the body – effectively creating an exact digital twin of Maddison, both inside and out.

Data points used to create the digital model of Maddison sidestepping

Griffith University Biomechanical Engineer Professor David Lloyd says the combination of big-budget film animation-quality, with their unique functional biomechanical model that both replicates and predicts stress and strain in the tissues inside the body, is a marriage made in heaven for elite athlete preparation.

“We’ve built our proof of principal Digital Athlete utilising our platform technology – Personalised Digital Human – using 3D body scans, MRI and motion capture data so we have a really detailed representation of the body shape, bones, joints, muscles and other soft tissues in the daily performance environment,” Professor Lloyd says.

“The Digital Athlete allows us to understand the unique loading patterns on tissues in real time during performance, for example a side-step, which is both a common movement and cause of anterior cruciate ligament injuries in the knee.

This is critical, because each athlete will experience different stresses due to their unique physiology, which we are accurately capturing so we can prevent injury and optimise performance.”

Griffith Director of Sports Engagement and former Olympic rowing gold medallist Duncan Free is actively promoting the potential of the technology to sport officials, coaches and athletes and seeking to expand relationships with the AIS and QAS, while exciting other sporting bodies.

The Digital Athlete has the potential to be the ultimate coaching tool.”

“Coaches have a great eye for technique, but this can really take the guesswork out of designing training programs and be hugely valuable in helping to prevent injury and in rehabilitating athletes,” Duncan Free says.

For Duncan Jones, whose own innovation has seen him in constant work over two decades, the opportunity to collaborate on The Digital Athlete adds another string to his bow and has further convinced him of the value of university graduates who blend creative and scientific smarts.

“At Griffith they’re pushing boundaries, doing things that no-one else is doing,” he says.

“We’re jumping in to secure this new talent because if you don’t innovate with cutting-edge ideas and technologies you can’t make award-winning films nor adapt to the expanding opportunities in the post-Covid world of filmmaking – the Gold Coast is a leading location for filmmaking in the Southern Hemisphere and the future is exciting.”

April 22, 2021 By Kathy Kruger

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From Research to Reality: GCHKP Talent Leads the LuminaX 2025 Cohort

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