New director elected to AusBiotech

Last week’s AusBiotech annual general meeting (AGM) saw the election of Professor Jan Tennent as the new director of the organisation — an addition that is expected to bring a strong industry-research conduit to the AusBiotech board.

Professor Tennent is a respected senior executive and networked business leader with international and national experience in the pharmaceutical, agribiotech and research sectors. She has a record of contribution and accomplishment in the governance and management of NFP organisations and highly matrixed organisations including CSIRO, CSL and Pfizer.

Professor Tennent’s research career included periods as director of the CRC for Vaccine Technology and program manager for the Vaccines and Immunology group of CSIRO Animal Health. In these roles, she honed her innovation and management skills having oversight of the research and vaccine clinical trial activities of a 20-strong team.

An alumnus of Monash and Deakin universities, Professor Tennent was appointed in 2017 as Collaborative Professor at the University of Osaka. She is a Principal Fellow at The University of Melbourne, a Fellow of the Australian Society for Microbiology and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She is currently the CEO of Biomedical Research Victoria, linking health and medical research with clinical care in Victoria.

“We are very pleased to welcome Professor Jan Tennent to the board,” said AusBiotech Chair Julie Phillips. “Jan’s combination of industry experience with Pfizer and CSL, strong network and expertise in the research sector and her renowned integrity and diligence will bring innovation, expertise and focus to this role.”

The election result will see current AusBiotech director Serina Cucuzza depart the board after three years of service to the organisation. Phillips thanked Cucuzza for her valuable contribution over this time, saying she “brought strong governance skills, a research and early commercialisation perspective to the board, for which we are most grateful”.

It was separately announced last week that two AusBiotech-led projects will receive funding from MTPConnect — the Medical Technologies and Pharmaceuticals Industry Growth Centre — over the next two years. The projects were two of 20 selected for funding as part of MTPConnect’s Project Fund Program — a competitive, dollar-for-dollar matched program investing in big, bold ideas to improve the productivity, competitiveness and innovative capacity of Australia’s medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector.

The funding will allow the Australia-China Life Sciences Partnership Program to increase awareness and opportunities for communication, collaboration and commercialisation between the life sciences sector in Australia and China, to deliver high-quality, collaborative research and industry projects as well as valuable data analytics on commercial engagement between the two countries.

The second project, the Pan-Asia Regenerative Medicine Alliance (PARMA) Program, aims to develop and implement a global framework to identify and match research, marketing and investment opportunities in regenerative medicine, leveraging the pre-existing relationship between the sectors in South Korea, Japan and Australia to test and develop PARMA before expanding to other countries.

MTPConnect’s Project Fund Program is a competitive, dollar-for-dollar matched funding program investing in big, bold ideas to improve the productivity, competitiveness and innovative capacity of Australia’s medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sector. MTPConnect is supported by the Australian Government’s Industry Growth Centres Initiative.