At the Bionics Institute 2026 Preview
Presentations on chronic pain and women’s health at the new Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery, and a clear message about the gap between discovery and commercialisation.
IRI attended the Bionics Institute 2026 Preview Event, held at the new Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD). Our thanks to CEO Robert Klupacs and the team for the invitation.
The evening’s presentations covered breakthroughs in chronic pain management and in women’s health. Hearing how those projects are moving from the laboratory toward clinical use is the clearest argument there is for translational research.
One theme stayed with us: Australia’s research capability is strong, but the path from discovery to commercialisation still lags behind practice in the United States and China. Learning from those markets — and integrating AI into everyday research and development workflows — is how that gap closes.
When clinical research, engineering and industry collaboration sit in the same building, complex medical problems get solved faster. The opening of the ACMD marks a new stage for translational medicine in Melbourne.
From the day
