UNSW has secured 16 of The Australian’s Top 100 Innovators List in 2023
UNSW has secured 16 of The Australian's annual Top 100 Innovators List with 20 UNSW Alumni recognised. This prestigious lineup includes academics and alumni from UNSW Sydney, all of whom have earned a place on this year's list. The compilation of this list is overseen by the Australian technology editor, David Swan, and it shines a spotlight on the remarkable achievements of entrepreneurs, founders, and change makers who are driving innovation and pushing boundaries across the nation.
Among these honourees stands David Burt, Director of Entrepreneurship at UNSW, operating in the sector of Education and Talent. David Burt shared his thoughts on this achievement, saying "This recognition in the Top 100 reflects the outstanding work being done by the team at UNSW Founders where we lead the way on how to increase the formation and success rates of new Australian ventures. Seeing so many other UNSW people included in this Top 100 list is great evidence of the focus and investment that UNSW is making into being Australia’s most entrepreneurial university.”
UNSW, originally established as a technical college and now a world-class research university, has fostered a distinctive culture of innovation. This culture has given rise to alumni who understand that great new ideas must also be translated into practice. After all, it is through implementation that ideas can have a tangible positive impact on society. UNSW remains steadfast in its commitment to nurturing these values as it continues to shape the next generation of Australia’s leaders.
This achievement comes on the heels of UNSW taking the number one spot in the ANZ region for alumni-founded start-ups with US$10 Million+ funding. Some of the notable UNSW students, alumni, and staff who have ventured into the world of startups include Pasha Rayan and Tom Brunskill, co-founders of Forage, Airtasker co-founder and CEO Tim Fung, and Atlassian co-founders and co-CEOs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.
UNSW Founders takes pride in offering Australia's most comprehensive university entrepreneurship program, which encompasses a variety of programs and services designed to guide ideas from the concept stage to the development of rapidly growing startups. Since 2018, the Founders programs have provided support to more than 600 startups and have extended seed funding to over 82 of them through their flagship 10x Accelerator programs. These startups, which received seed funding, have collectively raised over $129 million in post-program funding and have generated an enterprise value exceeding $576 million since their graduation. Additionally, they have created 347 new jobs.
The UNSW community, comprising staff, alumni, and students, stands at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship, exemplifying the university's commitment to fostering groundbreaking ideas and transforming them into real-world solutions.
If you’re UNSW a student, staff, or alumni and you have a startup or an idea for one, sign up for our FREE Coach & Connect service and meet with a top startup expert to help you at any stage in your journey.
UNSW is committed to equipping the next generation of our entrepreneurs with the right skills, networks, and investment capital they need to grow their new businesses. We have a clear mission to be Australia’s most entrepreneurial university, ensuring our innovations and discoveries are translated into positive economic, social, and environmental impact.
Continue reading to browse the full list of notable Staff, alumni, and students affiliated with UNSW who have made significant contributions in various sectors:
Dr Alexander Soeriyadi
SECTOR: Agriculture and environment
LLEAF an alumnus of the 10x Accelerator program, is an agtech startup with a mission to increase global food abundance using its patented light-shifting dye technology. Designed to be used in greenhouse structures, the plastic film technology passively shifts the wavelength of sunlight to optimise plant growth by increasing photosynthesis or simulating seasonal change for flowering and fruiting. Founded by industrial chemists Dr Alexander Soeriyadi and Dr Alexander Falber out of UNSW in 2016, LLEAF last year raised $3.5m in a bridging round led by Danish investment firms Alfa Ventures and 2 Degrees. “Every aspect of our society will need to transition to clean alternatives, and we have made it our mission to enable growers to do the same,” COO Chris Wilkins said last year.
Dr Will Crowe and Dr Hiranya Jayakody
HEO Robotics (10x Accelerator Alumni)
SECTOR: Space
HEO Robotics, also an alumnus of the 10x Accelerator program, was founded by William Crowe and Hiranya Jayakody when the pair were both earning their PhDs at UNSW Sydney in astrodynamics and mechatronics engineering respectively. Their startup is a satellite-to-satellite image company and says it offers a world-first commercial in-orbit satellite inspection service. By equipping satellites already launching into space with state-of-the-art camera technology, HEO Robotics is taking a proactive approach to ensuring the long-term sustainability of space operations, reducing the need for additional satellite launches. “We are thrilled to put an Australian-manufactured camera in space and continue on our mission of making space transparent,” says Crowe. “We need high-quality data to make evidence-based decisions. As a world first, the Holmes Imagers will provide improved data to HEO Inspect so our customers have access to non-Earth imaging and analytics on the space objects that matter to them.”
Emily Casey
SECTOR: Community, Web3 and crypto
A key cog in Australia’s startup ecosystem, Emily Casey has grown her What the Health?! community and content hub to more than 5000 people, using her medical industry experience and networks to help shine a light on healthcare innovation. Since its humble beginnings, WTH has added a private community, jobs board and events platform for its engaged audience of health innovators and investors. Casey is also an active angel investor herself and last year joined Side Stage Ventures as employee number one. “If it’s hard for someone like me who has direct access to health professionals and services, how on earth does anyone else stand a chance?” Casey asks. “All my experiences have come together to give me a diverse picture of the ecosystem and how things work. I bring a balanced view and voice to it.”
Ajay Prakash
SECTOR: Education and talent
Edtech entrepreneur Ajay Prakash has built what he describes as the most efficient re-skilling program in the world. Sydney-based EntryLevel has trained about 40,000 people in the tech sector, primarily Nigerians, and has a stated goal of educating one billion people by 2030. Backed by Blackbird Ventures and with plans to expand into Kenya and Ghana, EntryLevel’s program can re-skill workers in a matter of weeks. “I treat this as a science problem,” says Prakash. “We want to reach one billion people by 2030, and that’s because I think the global unemployment crisis is probably one of the biggest problems we’re going to face as humanity in the next 10 to 20 years, especially with AI creating questions around the future of the workforce.”
Jono Herman, Dan Brockwell and Marina Wu
SECTOR: Education and talent
Edtech startup Earlywork began as a newsletter offering early-career resources and advice to a dozen of co-founders Jono, Dan and Marina’s close friends. The startup, which styles itself as a home for young people in the tech, startup and social impact industries, offers a hiring platform, Slack channel, and newsletter, along with short courses to upskill students in areas of demand. Graduates only pay for a course if they find a role within six months of completion, part of Earlywork’s ambition to be seen as the world’s best training ground for community builders and next generation educators. Last year, the startup raised $700,000 in pre-seed funding led by Square Peg.
Chris McGrath and Eden Tehan
SECTOR: Energy
5B refers to the five billion years of sunshine left on Earth – and, importantly, to the infinite energy potential in that sunshine. Solar engineers Edan Tehan and Chris McGrath founded the company with the aim of making large-scale solar setups quicker, easier, safer and cheaper to deploy using prefabricated solar arrays. The company closed a $55 million Series B round in late 2022 (including a $20 million investment from BP) and has stationed its Maverick technology – each consisting of an accordion-style array of up to 90 panels – across more than 100 sites worldwide. The system was the winner of the clean tech category in the 2023 World Future Awards.
Yujin Wo
SECTOR: Energy
A recent $90 million investment will supercharge the ability of H2X to deliver its hydrogen-based zero emission commercial vehicles around the world. The company, founded in 2019, is focused on hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) and fuel cell electric generators, particularly in the sphere of logistical vehicles like buses, trucks, delivery vans and taxis; it claims this method makes for longer range and faster refuelling compared to battery electric vehicles. So far, the technology is only useful to commercial operations with a “back to base” model, since refuelling is not commercially available, but H2X hopes this will change over time.
Vince Allen and David Hu
SECTOR Energy
Born from Vince Allen’s UNSW PhD project in a garage, SunDrive’s innovative idea is the use of copper, rather than the more expensive silver, in solar cells. “Only one per cent of the world’s energy is met by solar and today’s technology is already at its limits in terms of efficiency, cost and scalability, and silver is behind all three of these limitations,” said Allen last year. Having already achieved impressive solar efficiency levels, SunDrive raised $21 million including from CSIRO’s Main Sequence Ventures, whose partner Bill Bartee says, “This has the potential to be one of the genuinely transformative moments in clean energy technology.”
Mic Black
SECTOR: Food
Agritech startup Rainstick is combining modern electrokinetics with ancient cultural knowledge to harness the power of lightning to grow plants. Named by CSIRO as one of Australia’s top “deep tech game changers,” co-founders Lyons and Black are currently seeking investors and collaborators to build on the success of mushroom trials and bring a commercially viable product to market. The product – which mimics the bioelectric effect of thunderstorms to target electrical frequencies in plants and fungi – was inspired by the ancient cultural knowledge of the Maiawali people, Lyons’s Indigenous ancestors. Lyons and Black are busy testing their product, including on a mushroom farm in north Queensland, and are looking to raise an additional $750,000 on top of the $200,000 they’ve already taken in to continue developing the technology.
Rory San Miguel
SECTOR: Manufacturing, hardware and infrastructure
Propeller uses drone data and photogrammetry to create realistic 3D site maps for companies in the mining, waste resources, construction and survey and engineering industries, and provides site management and measurement services using a cloud-based workspace. It’s a dream business for Rory San Miguel, who started building stuff as a kid, and had a sideline at university teaching fellow engineering students how to make drones before founding Propeller with Francis Vierboom. Propeller has offices in Sydney and Denver and a remote workforce around the world. Investors include locals Blackbird and Aware Super, and international venture capital firms Accel and Sequoia China.
Eric Peck
SECTOR: Manufacturing, hardware and infrastructure
Swoop Aero describes itself as “the only end-to-end drone logistics platform on the planet”. A lofty claim, but the Melbourne-based business is active in six continents and has delivered more than 1.3 million individual items. Eric Peck is a former Air Force officer, and saw the need for a logistics system for remote areas where trucks and cars may not reach, particularly in humanitarian applications with emergency and medical equipment. Swoop Aero craft have delivered vaccines for children living on remote islands in Vanuatu and launched a sustained medical air logistics and disaster relief operation in Malawi with drones piloted from Melbourne.
Cassie Bell
SECTOR: Retail and e-commerce
Cassie Bell and Steph Skevington’s Butter is billed as insurance for the things people “actually” care about. The idea had come up one night at a house party in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, when the two women, both former lawyers, were sharing a glass of wine while exchanging recent tragedies; Bell had broken an expensive pair of earrings while Skevington totalled her laptop. Not long after in 2021, both co-founders quit their roles and launched their product. And in a not so distant future, Butter will find a home in the digital checkout of marketplaces for items worth $300 to $5000.
Dominik Daners
SECTOR: Space
A founding resident at the National Space Industry Hub, Mawson Rovers designs and builds robotic vehicles to support sustainable human exploration of space. The company is aiming to support NASA and SpaceX’s goal of returning humans to the Moon’s surface from 2025, by developing robots that help with construction, maintenance and inspection of lunar facilities and infrastructure. The Mawson Rovers team is confident its R1 vehicle, which weighs in at 20 kilograms, will demonstrate mobility on earth and allow the company to develop and test sensors, avionics and actuators for future lunar applications. In December, Mawson Rovers delivered custom space hardware to the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) for testing ahead of its upcoming satellite mission, planned to launch to orbit in late 2023.
Victor Zheng
SECTOR: Fintech and finance
The first Australian fintech to develop a bank-grade, end-to-end payments-as-a-service platform, mx51 raised a $32.5 million funding round in 2022 and has been quickly growing its customer base and headcount. For merchants, mx51 offers a single white-label merchant portal that integrates disparate payment technology solutions into a regularly updated platform. Co-founder Victor Zheng says mx51 is on track to one day achieve its goal of becoming the payments solution of choice for merchants. “We’ve succeeded on the back of our sharp focus on simplifying the merchant payment experience, and empowering banks and acquirers to innovate around legacy technology and to keep pace with changes in the payments sector.”
Michelle Simmons AO
SECTOR: Software, technology and AI
Former Australian of the Year Michelle Simmons closed one of the largest technology startup raises of the year in July, pulling in $50.4 million for her quantum computing firm Silicon Quantum Computing from investors including the Australian government, Telstra, UNSW and CBA as it races to build the world’s first commercial-scale, silicon-based quantum computer. Her company has grown from humble labs in the University of NSW into a hardware manufacturing hub for the quantum computing industry globally. Quantum error correction protects information by encoding it across multiple physical qubits to form a “logical qubit” and is believed to be the only way to produce a large-scale quantum computer with error rates low enough for useful calculations. “This funding now lets us get to some of the next big milestones and technical hurdles, one of those being logical qubits, and being able to do error correction on quantum processes,” Simmons says. “And we’ll be building out the team and continuing to expand the manufacturing base that we’ve built here in Australia.”
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