Melbourne receives $50 million ICT research boost
Melbourne receives $50 million ICT research boost
The University of Melbourne has secured AUD$50 million for a research and development facility to develop advanced information and communications technologies.
The Minister for Information and Communication Technology, Marsha Thomson, said that the funding will be allocated to the Victoria Node of National ICT Australia over the course of five years to build this facility that will undertake globally significant ICT research into the design of next-generation communication networks.
It will also include a purpose built laboratory - the Terabit Networking Laboratory (TNL). "It builds on Victoria's excellence in telecommunications research and on the internationally acclaimed work already being undertaken at the University of Melbourne in photonics research, as well as the Centre for Ultra Broadband Information Networking.
"The government believes very strongly that we have a responsibility to back our research community, to invest in innovation and research and to drive the commercialisation of research."
"National ICT Australia aims to build the Laboratory into a fully operational ICT research facility with 80 researchers and PhD students by the end of 2006."
She hopes this will cement Victoria as Australia's leading producer of IT and computing graduates. Victoria's telecommunications industry has a turnover of almost $10 billion, employing 20,000 people with one of the largest R&D clusters in the Asia Pacific.
Thomson added. "We consider telecommunications to be the roads and bridges of the new economy, an so the announcement today of the Victorian Node of NICTA is a welcome addition to the Victorian ICT industry and research community.
"The latest figures from Whitehorse Consulting show that the R&D carried out in Victoria by the top 250 ICT companies operating in Australia now accounts for 47 percent of the national total, far more than other state."
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