$20m home for ICT research

NZI3, the national ICT Innovation Institute at Canterbury University, will this week open a purpose-built $20 million building designed to break down cultural barriers between academics and the country's top technology firms.

The Tertiary Education Commission agreed to pay half the cost of the building after the university won a bid to host the institute three years ago.

The facility will be opened by Prime Minister John Key on Thursday and will house 50 post- graduate students and 30 researchers. They include staff on secondment from companies such as Jade, Tait Electronics, IBM and HP that helped co-fund the institute.

NZi3 director Darin Graham says the institute's creation represented a shift in focus for the university from pure to applied research, which had occurred in an "ad hoc fashion" only.

It is focusing on research areas that are aligned to those of its commercial partners, such as wireless communications, software engineering, geospatial technology and computer interfaces.

Technology developed at NZi3 would feature in new products due to be released by Tait Electronics in about six months.

One prototype under development at NZi3's geospatial research centre is a pilotless helicopter that carries sensors and cameras to survey farmland and waterways. Commercialisation manager Mat Appelman says it could also be used in the wake of natural disasters, such as fires.

"Militaries around the world have been using large, unmanned aerial vehicles for decades so the principles behind the technology are not new."

Miniaturising a vehicle that could fly itself around a pre- programmed flight path has "huge commercial potential", he says, especially if the helicopter could be made small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

Dr Graham says NZi3's building is open plan, rather than being a "typical university cloistered office", allowing students to work in multidisciplinary teams. "We are trying to create a new, outward-looking culture.

"New Zealand, to be a player on the world stage, needs to have more ideas flowing to help create new products and services."

Canterbury was a natural choice to host NZi3 because of the university's expertise in engineering and because it hosts "the third- largest supercomputer in the southern hemisphere".

But NZi3 is a national institute and would work with researchers elsewhere. "By no means does any university have the market cornered in any area."

Dr Graham, a Canadian migrant, helped set up a similar institute - Communications Information Technology Ontario - before moving to New Zealand. He describes himself as a businessman rather than an academic.

He says it takes time to break down barriers between profit- driven businesses and academics, whose success is traditionally measured by the quality and volume of their published research.

"It is all about building up trust and value. When it takes off, the spark and energy is truly phenomenal."

The economic downturn is having an impact, he says, but is an opportunity for forward-looking companies to build next-generation products that can leapfrog their competition.

- © Fairfax NZ News