UOW Innovation Campus secures $180M expansion with three new research institutes

The University of Wollongong's Innovation Campus has secured $180 million in combined federal, state, and industry funding for a major expansion that will add three new dedicated research institutes — the Australian Institute for Advanced Manufacturing, the Clean Energy Transition Centre, and the Digital Health Research Hub — to a precinct that already houses more than 80 technology companies and research groups on the former BHP industrial site between the university campus and Fairy Meadow Beach.

The expansion will more than double the campus's commercial research floor space and create co-location opportunities for industry partners whose proximity to the university's research teams has been demonstrated by the existing tenants to accelerate both the pace of research translation and the quality of the industry-applied research that the university delivers.

UOW vice-chancellor Professor Patricia Davidson said the Innovation Campus expansion represented "the most significant single investment in Wollongong's knowledge economy in the university's 50-year history," noting that the combination of the campus's location — adjacent to the Port Kembla heavy industry precinct and the offshore wind zone that is being developed in the waters off Wollongong — with the research institutes' focus on manufacturing, clean energy, and digital health created a uniquely coherent innovation ecosystem.

The Clean Energy Transition Centre will have particular relevance to BlueScope Steel, whose $3.5 billion green steel transformation program is the most significant industrial decarbonisation project in Australian history and whose R&D requirements over the transition period represent a major research partnership opportunity for UOW's materials science and process engineering capabilities.

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