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Farewell Di Dixon

Di visits the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing as part of an investment mission

After years championing the vision for a health and knowledge precinct whilst working for City of Gold Coast and then working on bringing the vision to life through establishing a unique partnership, Di Dixon took on the role of inaugural Project Director for the GCHKP in 2015.

Four years later, Di departs the Gold Coast for Adelaide, optimistic about the future potential of the Precinct and its long-term benefits for the Gold Coast, Queensland and Australia.

We asked Di for her insights into the Precinct’s future.

Developing a Precinct like the GCHKP is a long term project – looking back what do you see as the biggest achievements and looking forward what are the biggest opportunities?

The precinct’s journey has already spanned nearly 2 decades demonstrating the commitment from the city with a focus on driving innovation, creating knowledge based jobs while retaining and attracting global talent to create a precinct that will take the Gold Coast to a new level of international recognition, economic sustainability and employment opportunities.

Such long term vision is key and strong leadership is required to maintain momentum.

Our key achievements have been leveraging the 2018 Commonwealth Games through a global investment mission program and leveraging opportunities to raise recognition and credibility of the amazing talent and clinical and research activity already taking place here. Also to have brought several global companies and investors to the table to start negotiations on land development and research collaborations have been key – going forward the opportunity is to continue to leverage our people – without the global talent we have here we would not be able to have investment opportunity doors opened to us and credible partners to make the precinct an attractive place to establish and grow.

With Griffith University Vice Chancellor Professor Carolyn Evans and staff of the Institute for Glycomics at Bio International 2019

How important is a partnership approach with a shared vision when you are managing a major project over the long-term?

A partnership approach is critical and the strong collaboration of the GCHKP has been the envy of many precincts I have visited globally – the establishment of a dedicated GCHKP Project Office over 4 years ago focused the required collaboration to drive the successful realisation of the GCHKP and its vision.

To lead the priorities of different organisations while achieving the broader precinct vision can be a challenge but by having a strong formal commitment to the vision the project is able to stay on track and continue to leverage each areas expertise.

With Lord Marland of Odstock, Chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, and Raymond Huang and Tan See Leng from Commonwealth Alliance of Youth Entrepreneurs (CAYE).

What will be the major challenge to meet over the coming few years?

The challenge will be to maintain our global credibility to drive investment interest – this is increasing but there are so many competing locations around the world the only way to succeed is to stay true to the targeted end users we know will benefit from being co-located here on the Gold Coast – this must be based on our specific international clinical and research strengths and the facilitation of cross disciplinary opportunities which is where the creative innovation and solution driven outcomes will emerge to set us apart from competing locations.

With Professor Ned Pankhurst, former Deputy Vice Chancellor Research, Griffith University and Maddie McIntyre, Business Manager, Materialise Australia

With the Mayoral delegation on an investment mission to Chengdu, China, 2019

Filed Under: People of the Precinct

From Italy to the Gold Coast – a path towards a spinal injury cure

Dr Dinesh Palipana (left) and Dr Claudio Pizzalato

Dr Claudio Pizzalato was a Masters student at Italy’s prestigious University of Padua, when the chance to continue investigating ground-breaking personalised neuromusculoskeletal models lured him to Griffith University in 2012 to work under internationally-renowned biomechanical engineer Professor David Lloyd.

What followed was an ambitious thesis project to complete his PhD in 2016 – “Real-Time Estimation of Lower Limb Musculoskeletal Tissue Loading Using an Electromyogram-Informed Neuromusculoskeletal Model”. Dr Pizzalato had demonstrated how to understand muscle weakness or damage by measuring the nerve signals from the brain that make muscles move, in real-time, in order to design personalised training, treatment and rehabilitation.

He won the Australian and New Zealand Society of Biomechanics Publication of the Year award 2015, and the Young Investigator Award at the 2016 Australasian Biomechanics Conference.

Dr Pizzalato continued on as a post-doc working on an Australian Research Council (ARC) linkage project as part of Professor Lloyd’s dynamic local and international team of collaborators, enjoying life on the Gold Coast and setting his sights towards curative treatments for spinal cord injury and other neuromusculoskeletal conditions.

Capturing motion tracking data with Professor David Lloyd

Dynamic duo work towards spinal injury cure

Before they became colleagues and friends, Dr Pizzalato and Dr Dinesh Palipana, Queensland’s first quadriplegic medical doctor, were actually next-door neighbours on the Gold Coast.

In 2018 the paired up to pursue what Dr Palipana calls his ‘dirty little secret’, a spinal cord injury cure for himself and breakthrough treatments that would provide increased range of movement for paralysed patients.

Having understood the opportunity to electrically stimulate muscle movement with personalised muscle activation patterns in real-time, the duo and colleagues turned their attention to capturing brain signals via an EEG (electroencephalogram).

The Personalised Digital Twin model sits in between to connect the ‘top-down’ neural data from the brain – Dinesh thinking about riding an assistive rehabilitation bike – with the ‘bottom-up’ feedback from muscle stimulation as he rides the bike.

Dr Pizzolato says digital twins give an inside view of a patient’s body to better understand what’s going on during rehabilitation.

“We can interrogate the digital twin to figure out how to best activate muscles to achieve the rehabilitation,” he says. “Personalisation in this context is essential.”

While digital twins are not new, the ADaPT (Advanced Design and Prototyping Technologies) research team’s approach is unique because of the real-time analysis of movements in the spinal cord patient. It’s a process that Dr Pizzolato says saves time and leads to customised treatment including highly targeted surgery.

“Most of the treatment out there for spinal cord injury is very generic,” he says.

“You can’t treat everyone the same and the most important part of personalisation is being able to adapt to the increasing capabilities of the person being rehabilitated.”

“This is an enabling technology that can put Australia at the cutting edge of designing implants and wearable devices,” Professor Lloyd says.

“ADaPT and the personalised digital twin technology is getting a lot of international attention from biomedical device companies, which is really important to bring that investment into the region and into Australia.

“It’s also attracting Research Fellows and PhD students who want to come to Griffith University and the Health and Knowledge Precinct, and study in that environment.”

Dr Pizzolato won the Queensland Fresh Scientist of the Year Judges Award 2018.

Filed Under: BUSINESS, INVEST

Future STEM workforce fast taking shape in the Precinct

Alistair Quinn (left), Kaecee Fitzgerald and David Saxby

Leading global innovators and technology-focused businesses can be assured of a growing workforce of qualified and entrepreneurial professionals to support their new horizons in the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct.

Analysis by KPMG of recent local graduate trends demonstrates a rapidly growing pipeline of skilled workers, and together with course and program innovation by Gold Coast education providers, promises a fertile environment for talent attraction and retention and entrepreneurial innovation.

Graduate numbers in STEM fields including health now account for 65% of total graduate numbers, with science, engineering, ICT, architecture and industrial design graduates accounting for 36% of the total, according to the analysis commissioned by the GCHKP Project Office, with Study Gold Coast and Regional Development Australia (RDA) Gold Coast (download fact sheet- –GCHKP Workforce 2019_WEB)

Responding to increasing demand for higher-level skills and specialised credentials there has been strong growth in post-graduate qualifications, including significant increases in HDR qualifications in engineering and medicine at Griffith University.

Growing trend towards specialisation

With core, multi-disciplinary and ‘soft’ skills such as communication and collaboration all highly valued, there’s also a growing trend towards knowledge specialisation to cater to emerging fields in the digital, Industry 4.0 era. Griffith University, and the city’s other universities and education providers are responding with specialty degree majors in areas such as electronic UAV engineering and micro-credentials designed to directly address industry needs.

And in an increasing number of cases, industry-focused specialist expertise is being honed through PhD research that has direct commercial translation. Industrial Digital Design PhD candidate Kaecee Fitzgerald is working in a collaborative team as part of a $900,000 BioMedTech Horizon’s project with industry, led by Griffith University.

Working with clinical lead, orthopaedic surgeon Professor Randy Bindra, biomedical engineers Professor David Lloyd and Dr David Saxby, and fellow Phd candidate in Mechanical Engineering Robotics) Alistair Quinn, Kaecee’s role is to match 3D design technology and materials with clinical and engineering requirements to create artificial wrist ligament.

“It is unusual to have a PhD that is so genuinely practical,” says Kaecee.

“I get a little bit bored if I’m just working in one discipline, so I love to get all the different perspectives and be able to bring them together as we progress the design. It’s a slow process that can be tedious, but when it works its euphoric.”

New and innovative courses

Examples of new and innovative programs include:

Bachelor of Intelligent Digital Technologies (Griffith)
Bachelor of Data Science (Griffith)
Master of Electronic and Sports Engineering (Griffith)
Master of Biotechnology (Griffith)

Master of Healthcare Innovations (Bond University)
Master of Business Data Analytics (Bond University)
Master of Actuarial Sciences (Bond University)

Bachelor of Digital Business (Southern Cross University)
Bachelor of Podiatry/Pedorthics (Southern Cross University)
Certificate IV in Cyber Security (Gold Coast TAFE)

Talent attracts talent

With a 10,000 strong workforce already within the Precinct, talent is drawn from all over the world, with rich, multidisciplinary research opportunities, a collaborative, commercially-focused environment and entrepreneurial culture, as well as an enviable lifestyle all key factors in attracting top global talent.

Professor Johnson Mak is a prominent HIV researcher who has held a range of appointments including the Peter Doherty Fellowship, Monash Fellowship, Pfizer Fellowship and the ARC Future Fellowship.

“I was a Hong Kong born Canadian and I trained in Canada and came to Australia, to Melbourne, about 20 years ago. The thing that attracted me to the Gold Coast, and the Institute for Glycomics in particular, is the strong collaboration and translational focus – they have a great business team to bring discoveries from bench to bedside.”

Professor Mak, his team and collaborators are taking a Glycomics approach to HIV, probing the role glycans or sugars play in helping the virus, with a view to new antiviral treatments.

Global 3D printing software pioneers Materialise recently located their Australian HQ to the GCHKP, lured by collaborative R&D opportunities and an entrepreneurial culture that is part of the Gold Coast DNA.

The innovation ecosystem is nurtured by the City and universities with various entrepreneurship and start-up programs and incubation facilities, including the exciting new co-working and innovation space in the Precinct, COHORT.

Materialise was attracted to the Gold Coast Health & Knowledge Precinct due to the long term
vision of the precinct, the strong support from the city, the research strengths of Griffith University and the relevant skills and expertise being developed on the Gold Coast in the fast-moving 3D printing software arena.

As a Queensland graduate, it’s great to be able to locate our Australian HQ here and employ our growing workforce from the local skills base.

Maddie McIntyre, Business Manager, Materialise Australia