Translation Research Infrastructure survey

What is TRI?

TRI supports the translation of fundamental research into real-world benefits such as commercial products, improved decision making, policy and risk management products and improved health, environmental and societal outcomes.

The 2021 National Research Infrastructure (NRI) Roadmap identified TRI as a step-change area to focus NRI investment and delivery significant impact for Australian researchers and innovators. The Government invested approximately $36 million to uplift TRI as part of the 2023 National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Funding Round.  

In the forthcoming 2025 NCRIS funding round, a small proportion of the $435 million investment will be available for TRI funding which will be considered alongside the concurrent National Digital Research Infrastructure Strategy (NDRI), Environment and Climate Research Infrastructure (ECRI) and Workforce Research Infrastructure funding opportunities.

What feedback are we asking for?

We are looking for feedback from the research community to test our draft themes in TRI needs. We identified these draft themes and trends based on initial consultations with the research and innovation community and are now seeking to hear from a broad range of stakeholder whether these themes reflect the sector’s needs.  

The draft themes are listed below.  

How will we use your feedback?

In the first instance, your feedback will inform the 2025 Investment Plan in response to the 2025 NCRIS guidelines.  The 2025 NRI Investment Plan will provide initial TRI funding to address smaller-scale priority needs within TRI or larger-scale priority needs that may draw from the NDRI, ECRI or Workforce step changes.  

The outcomes of this consultation may also inform:

• the development of the 2026 NRI Roadmap  
• potential future investment in subsequent investment plans.

Themes of TRI need

Theme 1 – TRI should be underpinned by staff with appropriate expertise  

Staff with specialised translation expertise are critical to TRI and translation efforts. This expertise often differs from the expertise required for basic research and could include roles such as engineers, innovation brokers, industry application scientists and industry client managers.  

Approaches to address staffing needs could include both domain specific initiatives and TRI-wide initiatives.  

Theme 2 – TRI should be Visible and Accessible to industry and end-users

Industry awareness of NRI is generally low, which is a barrier to industry engagement. Other barriers include difficult (and often multiple) access arrangements and differing timescales for industry and academic users.

Visible and integrated access arrangements for TRI, that ensure streamlined access (e.g. options for one access arrangement vs multiple or simplified administration) could address this barrier and support end-user communities end-to-end.

Theme 3 – Appropriate NRI governance mechanisms, operational support and business models enable translational research and industry access

Appropriate governance mechanisms and business models are necessary to coordinate the diverse capabilities with the NRI ecosystem and within NRI projects themselves. These governance arrangements and business models should be fit for purpose to encourage research translation (including addressing cultural disincentives, IP concerns, and contractual issues) and enable collaboration with both industry and existing translation initiatives.

Theme 4 - Appropriate data environments and security standards enable industry and end-user use

Data security and sovereignty can present specific challenges to research translation, as can concerns relating to privacy, regulatory compliance and competitive advantage. Addressing these challenges can enable both industry and end-user use of TRI, facilitate researcher access to sensitive industry data and create trusted data environments to improve collaboration to underpin translation.  

Approaches to addressing these barriers could include development of appropriate data infrastructure within TRI to enable industry use, collaboration with end-users and research translation. This could also include consideration of mechanisms to extend existing trust and identity initiatives to improve end-user access to data and to track outcomes of TRI.  

Please note – these needs will be considered in the context of the needs identified in the NDRI Strategy.

Theme 5 - Industry users and translation researchers need industry appropriate standards and processes  

A challenge for TRI is that the flexible, cutting-edge equipment needed for basic research is often not accredited against the quality standards required for scale-up and industry use.  

Approaches to addressing these challenges could include TRI adopting industry standards where appropriate and cost-effective. This could also include initiatives to support TRI to encourage consideration of industry standards at the fundamental research level to streamline prototyping and scale-up processes.