A Year of Firsts for our Adelaide Intermediary Team Supporting SA’s Ecosystem : MTPConnect

17 February 2023

Pictured: Pia, Jo, Stephanie and Dana from the AIP Program celebrate

This week MTPConnect's Adelaide Intermediary Program celebrated its first year of delivering services to SA’s Health and Medical Innovation ecosystem.

The program is focused on growing South Australia's health and medical industry sector by fostering collaboration, strategically building capacity and attracting new talent and opportunity across the research, innovation and translation value chain.

During the AIP’s first year, the team developed an impressive program of activities to support SA’s sector including:

Hosting 9 networking events with 822 attendees
Supporting 20 bids with 7 successes and more than $6 million funding flowing into SA
Taking 626 meetings with 157 organisations

MTPConnect ‘s CEO Stuart Dignam joined the celebrations helping AIP Director Jo Close smash the first birthday cake (and their goals in year 1!).

In another first, the AIP team hosted the launch of the biomanufacturing and quantum Industry Doctoral Training Centre (IDTC) PhD +Program today with special guests including Deputy Premier Susan Close, Chief Scientist for South Australia Prof Caroline McMillen, BioCina CEO Ian Wisenberg and Deans of Research, Industry and SA government partners, and PhD students.

MTPConnect’s Jo Close, Deputy Premier Susan Close and PhD student Thabata Muta touring BioCina's labs for the launch of the Biomanufacturing industry doctoral training centre pHD+ program.

In more firsts for 2023, the team kicked off with the first onsite Insight Series event at BioCina’s facilities. The packed-out event heard from AIP's Stephanie Morris who led an insightful chat with BioCina CEO, Ian Wisenberg, and VP & GM, Michael Tsaconas.

Guests learnt about the site's biomanufacturing history, how BridgeWest’s BioCina, a CDMO, is partnering with a multinational to scale production from Australia, and how collaborating is the key to business growth. Twelve lucky attendees also took a sneak peak tour of the BioCina clean rooms.

MTPConnect's Stuart Dignam and Stephanie Morris with BioCina's Ian Wisenberg and Michael Tsacanonas

The team was also pleased to host the first International guests for 2023 with the team from Yuhan who are connecting with the SA ecosystem.

Register now for the March SA Insights event hosted by AIP's Dana Bell featuring Avance Clinical & Aglilex – and discover the start-up journey of two university spin-outs now operating globally from SA. Kicking off at 5:30pm on Thursday 23 March 2023 at the University of Adelaide.

The AIP is delivered in partnership with the Adelaide BioMed City and the Government of South Australia.