Last week, Breakthrough Victoria CEO Rod Bristow spoke at the opening of La Trobe University’s Eagleworks Innovation Centre - a new flagship hub designed to accelerate the translation of research into real-world outcomes. Eagleworks brings together researchers, industry partners, startups and students through colocation, specialist facilities and end-to-end commercialisation support, from ideation and IP protection through to spinouts, scaleup and industry partnership.
It is also home to The La Trobe University Eagle Fund, La Trobe’s co-investment vehicle supported by Breakthrough Victoria, and part of Breakthrough Victoria’s University Innovation Platform (UIP). The UIP is a $100 million investment commitment established to tackle the most challenging point in the innovation lifecycle, where research has proven promise but is not yet ready for traditional venture capital.
Through UIP, Breakthrough Victoria co-invests alongside universities via bespoke pre-seed funds, co-designed to reflect each institution’s research strengths and commercial focus. Today, UIP includes seven Victorian university partnerships, with university capital matched by Breakthrough Victoria. Rod’s speech, published below, outlines why commitments like Eagleworks and UIP are critical to strengthening Victoria’s innovation pipeline and creating new companies and jobs.
Speech Transcript: Rod Bristow, CEO Breakthrough Victoria
I’d like to begin by also acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are meeting today, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
I also extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us today.
For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples have been the first innovators on this continent - developing deep knowledge systems, technologies and practices grounded in science, observation and care for Country. That legacy of innovation continues today.
La Trobe University has a long history of recognising the deep knowledge, culture and connection to Country that Aboriginal communities hold, and it’s a privilege to be here on this land as we come together to talk about innovation, research and the future.
Before I speak about our partnership with La Trobe University, I want to briefly set the context for Breakthrough Victoria (BV) - and why this work matters so deeply to us.
Breakthrough Victoria was established by the Victorian Government in 2021 with the vision to help transform the Victorian economy by investing in and supporting research and IP commercialisation.
Our track record since that time stands alone. We have committed over $480m to nearly 80 investments across managed funds, grants and direct equity investments. In doing so, we have crowded in approx. $1.5bn in capital from the private sector; and an independent report commissioned by BV last year showed that BV is on track to deliver over $5.3bn in economic contribution to Victoria by 2035.
Last month we achieved our first exit from the portfolio - neutral atom quantum sensing company Infleqtion - via a listing on the NYSE. This is the first of many as our focus on post-investment value creation starts to close the loop between IP generation, investment, scale and exit to recycle capital.
These results demonstrate BV’s activities are having a material positive benefit to supporting successful research and IP commercialisation in Victoria.
Our approach, best described as deploying patient capital and actively supporting investee companies post our initial investment, means we have the capacity to create new industries by investing where the market alone often can’t - at the early, complex and capital-intensive stages of company creation.
That means backing ambitious founders, partnering with world-class institutions, and helping build industries that will make a material positive difference to Victoria’s prosperity over decades - not just funding cycles.
Critically, our role is not simply to deploy capital.
It’s to build capability - to connect research to markets, ideas to industry, and talent to opportunity.
That system building role is exactly why we created the University Innovation Platform - and why partnerships with universities like La Trobe are so critical to Victoria’s long-term economic future.
Victoria produces world-class research.
Ensuring that research consistently translates into companies, products and industries that scale, here in Victoria and globally, is the core challenge – and core opportunity.
That gap between discovery and deployment is not about quality. It’s about capital, capability and coordination.
And that is precisely the problem the Breakthrough Victoria University Innovation Platform was designed to solve.
The University Innovation Platform is about scale and intent.
BV’s University Innovation Platform (or UIP) is a $100 million investment commitment established by Breakthrough Victoria to accelerate the commercialisation of high potential research emerging from Victorian universities.
It targets the most challenging point in the innovation lifecycle, the stage after research has proven promise, but before traditional venture capital is ready to engage.
Through UIP, Breakthrough Victoria coinvests alongside universities via bespoke pre-seed funds, codesigned with each institution to reflect their research strengths, maturity and commercial focus.
Today, UIP includes seven Victorian university partnerships, with university capital matched by Breakthrough Victoria.
This helps to create a repeatable pathway from lab to market, which in turn builds the infrastructure, governance, investment discipline and commercial capability that can support generation after generation of research led companies.
La Trobe University is a particularly important partner in this bold and ambitious endeavour.
La Trobe was one of the four universities who helped BV to co-design the UIP model, I articulated earlier; La Trobe’s focus on industry partnerships through co-location and supporting early industry collaboration is unique.
This approach brings together deep capability in agtech, biotech, diagnostics and biomedical science, alongside a clear institutional commitment to commercialisation.
The La Trobe University Eagle Fund is an $18 million pre-seed investment initiative co-funded equally by La Trobe University and Breakthrough Victoria.
The Fund is designed to accelerate the commercialisation of university research with a focus on digital health, AI, disease detection and treatment, food security and other areas aligned with the University’s research strengths.
The core goal of the Fund is to facilitate promising research moving decisively beyond the lab and into market ready companies.
Researchers are supported to think entrepreneurially early on through various local and international programs, with a recent example being the announcement with Plug and Play.
The Eagle Fund is the first step in proving to researchers and investors that the opportunity for research commercialisation is real. This opportunity is limited only by the vision we have, and the courage to chase it.
I’d like to give you some examples of the impact we’re already having with the UIP Program and the Eagle Fund specifically.
Across all start-ups in which BV has invested through the UIP, 35% of our co-invested capital with our university partners went to start-ups with at least one female co-founder. And for the Eagle Fund on a standalone basis, this number is 66%. You will meet and hear from all three extraordinary start-up founders later on today.
The first one is Excelligent, co-founded by Professor Andy Hill and Dr Lesley Cheng. Excelligent has developed a blood-based diagnostic platform for early and accurate detection of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons.
The second is Deftbiotech, led by two of Australia’s most distinguished scientists: Emeritus Professor Marilyn Anderson (CEO) and Emeritus Professor Adrienne Clarke AC (Chairperson), original inventors (and investors) of the technology here at La Trobe university, who continue to play an active leadership role in advancing biotech innovation.
The third is YieldX, formerly Gaia Project Australia, an agtech company commercialising La Trobe developed IP through the Eagle Fund. The founder of YieldX will be also presenting later today, so make sure you stay to learn about how external to university start-ups can work with La Trobe University.
These are not theoretical examples. These are live companies, built on Victorian research, backed early, and positioned to scale.
If we step back, the opportunity here is much larger than any single university or company.
Globally, leading innovation economies have learned a clear lesson: universities are not just sources of knowledge, they are engines of industrial renewal and growth.
Structured pathways from university IP to venture creation have produced entire sectors in life sciences, advanced manufacturing, quantum and clean energy: with particularly important real-world examples including the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of Tokyo and the Duke NUS Medical School.
Australia has the research depth and capability to do the same.
And La Trobe University through the activities of the Eagle Fund has a real opportunity to be at the centre of that story.
So where do we go next?
First, we continue to work closely with La Trobe to identify research with genuine commercial potential early, and to support researchers who want to build companies to commercialise their quality research.
Second, we continue to work to deepen the codesign of investment and support models, ensuring capital is paired with the right governance, market validation and industry connections from day one.
And third, we focus relentlessly on repeatability and scale.
One successful spinout is encouraging. But a system that produces ten, twenty, fifty over time is transformative.
Breakthrough Victoria is committed to that long-term partnership, not just as a funder, but as a builder of capability alongside La Trobe.
Because the opportunity here is not incremental.
It’s generational.
If we get this right, the ideas being developed on this campus today won’t just become companies, they’ll become globally relevant solutions, anchored in Victoria, creating impact for decades to come.
Thank you.