In September, the Foundation awarded $6.5 million in grants across its Environment, Medical Research and Arts programs

These comprised 5 Environment grants totalling $3,162,500 and 11 Medical Research grants totalling $1.4 million. In the Arts program, $1.6 million was allocated to the Ian Potter Creative Fellowship Program (in collaboration with the Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship Program) and $296,112 to The Ian Potter Cultural Trust for its latest round of emerging artists grants. 

Environment

The Wheen Bee Foundation Research Fund
Develop an Australian National Pollination Strategy and Implement the first stage of the Strategy Roadmap
$1 million over 5 years

The Wheen Bee Foundation (WBF) was established in 2009 by Gretchen Wheen (1929-2012), a pioneering queen bee breeder concerned by the increasing threats to pollinators. She bequeathed her estate to WBF to safeguard pollination security.

WBF engages with governments, the apiculture industry, agriculture, research organisations and the broader community. They support and deliver research, education and conservation initiatives that strengthen bee and other pollinator populations, improve pollination efficiency and increase food security and ecosystem health. WBF won the global Golden Bee Award 2024 for their work advancing the role of pollinators in ensuring food security, sustainable agriculture, nature conservation and biodiversity.

This project will deliver an Australian National Pollination Strategy (ANPS) to provide coordination across pollination services and pollinator-dependent industries and strengthen Australia’s biodiversity, ecosystem health and food security.

In Australia, pollination services for agriculture and the environment are provided through a combination of managed honey bees, feral honey bees, managed native bees and wild native bees, and other native insects, birds and mammals. At least 53 of Australia's crops rely on pollinators. Despite this, pollination in Australia is largely unmanaged.

The ANPS seeks to balance agriculture's needs with the protection and enhancement of the environment and biodiversity. Developing a national strategy will unite diverse commercial and environmental sector stakeholders and identify priority scientific research, policies, and best management practices. The project will engage in community consultations, undertake research, and use a co-design process to draft the first Australian National Pollination Strategy and an implementation plan.

It is highly collaborative involving 55 industry partners, environmental groups, corporate partners, research institutions, and state/territory governments. The creation of a national strategy offers excellent transformative potential to help Australia prepare for a looming threat to the environment, and food production and security.

Odonata Foundation
We Save Species Program – Expanding the Odonata Academy
$502,500 over 3 years

In 2016, the Odonata Foundation was established with the goal of scaling up environmental protection on private land. Its mission is to empower and enable Australians to save wildlife, reverse climate change, and increase biodiversity.

There is a demand from landowners and managers for accessible and practical short courses to help them improve nature conservation on their properties, often alongside their commercial agriculture or rangeland enterprises. The Odonata Academy will be a new public education program, delivered online and with several in-person sessions at Odonata’s properties. This grant will support the creation and establishment phase of the Odonata Academy.

The first course to be delivered under the new Academy will focus on Land Management and comprise 12 modules. Course participants will receive educational materials related to each module and will work towards developing their own threatened species recovery project strategy document, which will be the final output of the program and comprise an actionable strategy and implementation plan.

The Odonata Academy aims to attract 95 participants over the first 3 years. Odonata’s ambition is that Academy graduates create their own conservation activities on their land, and from this pool Odonata will select up to 10 targeted conservation projects to partner with, providing ongoing guidance, assistance to attract funding, and a support network of conservation practitioners.

The video above is from Channel Ten's The Project and describes the work done by the Odonata Foundation.

Medical Research

University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Heart valve prototyping and testing facility
$140,000

UNSW's Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (School) leads health initiatives, advancing biomedical knowledge and improving global health outcomes through innovative strategies and treatments. The School collaborates closely with the Tyree Institute of Health Engineering at the Randwick Health and Innovation Precinct, fostering interdisciplinary innovation and real-world impact through partnerships with clinicians and industry.

This grant contributes funding to purchase three key instruments that will significantly enhance the School's research capacity and capability in developing and testing new treatment options for patients suffering from heart valve disease. Used in combination, these instruments will be part of a system creating and testing 3-D printed heart valves using the "silk protein" discovered by A/Prof Jalena Rnjak-Kovacina, a Scientia Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering. Dr Rnjak-Kovacina has developed a new material using silkworm proteins, which is showing promise, but these instruments are needed to advance the research further.

Currently, heart valve replacements have only lasted 10 years, and with these surgeries happening earlier and earlier, there is a need to develop new options with better longevity. The prototyping and testing facility will benefit multiple research groups working on heart valve therapies and other MedTech projects, foster collaboration, and advance critical medical research.

The University of New England
Super-resolution Olympus FV4000 confocal microscope for cutting-edge biomedical imaging
$150,000

The University of New England (UNE) is an outer regional university—a 5-hour drive from Brisbane and a 7-hour drive or expensive 1-hour flight from Sydney. Confocal microscopy is a foundational technology for biomedical (and other) research, and it is not currently available at UNE.

This microscope will provide access to an affordable imaging suite with the best cutting-edge technology on the market, allowing UNE researchers and their collaborators to expand their capacity to discover scientific breakthroughs.

The super-resolution Olympus FV4000 microscope will allow detailed nanometer-resolution imaging of tissue samples for scientific research. This super-resolution microscopy is essential to accurately identify structural and protein changes in disease and follow treatments. This technology will allow researchers to interrogate cellular and protein details in healthy tissues and disease to aid in understanding disease mechanisms and the efficacy of treatments at a subcellular level.

Numerous research applications exist for the instrument, including in glaucoma, acute rheumatic fever, vaccine development, and other areas. Overall, at least seven biomedical research groups at UNE are looking to use the instrument. Due to UNE's strengths in environmental and agricultural research, other researchers, including the Environment and Rural Science research groups, CSIRO, and NSW Dept of Primary Industries, are also interested in using the instrument.

Hudson Institute of Medical Research
Unlocking Cellular Dynamics: Acquiring the Incucyte SX5 Live Cell Analysis System
$120,000

The Hudson Institute of Medical Research (Hudson Institute) is a leading Australian research institute in Melbourne, VIC, focused on improving human health through innovative and collaborative medical research.

This funding assists in purchasing a lncucyte SX5, a cutting-edge imaging and analysis system that enables long-term and automated monitoring of living cells over days or weeks without any disruption. This feature allows for multiple users and applications at the same time for more efficient use and greater capacity, as it can run up to six independent experiments in parallel.

The Incucyte SX5 will open new avenues for Hudson Institute researchers as they investigate the cellular mechanisms underlying various health conditions such as cancer, infections, autoimmune diseases and endometriosis. With the ability to simultaneously acquire multi-channel fluorescence and brightfield images, the SX5 can track a wide variety of cellular processes and functions involved in health and disease, including cell migration, proliferation, death, differentiation and morphological changes. It also allows measurement of cellular responses to other cells, biomaterials or drugs, including toxicity, oxidative stress, cell damage and more, to provide insights into these behaviours. This provides vital insights into disease mechanisms and potential treatments.

The instrument will be available to internal and external collaborators in the Monash Medical Precinct.

Details of all grants awarded in this round can be found in the Grants Database.