From the Vice-Chancellor (Alumni Newsletter - April 2019)

Deakin is a university with global impact, and we aim to translate our research into outcomes that are relevant and meaningful to the communities we serve. At the beginning of this month, the Australian Research Council (ARC) released its first Engagement and Impact Report. The report assessed researchers' engagement with those who use their research, identifying how well universities translate their research into economic, social, environmental, cultural and other benefits.

Of the 20 case studies Deakin submitted for review, all (100%) were rated high or medium for engagement (against a national average of 85%) and 90% were rated high or medium for approach to impact. Six were seen as having ‘highly significant impact’ and this included the movement based technologies developed by the Deakin Motion.Lab in partnership with creative industries. These Motion.Lab engagements enabled production companies and government and community organisations to develop new products and new audiences. Another wonderful example was research which documents heritage destruction in Iraq and Syria, using innovative methods of digital design and image capture. You may like to read more about some of our high impact research case studies.

We also recently learned the outcomes from the long awaited ARC Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2018 review. ERA measures the quality and breadth of university research against national and international benchmarks.

Your university is doing very well indeed! Deakin researchers excelled across a range of disciplines including the medical and health disciplines, frontier materials, nanotechnology and environmental science and this year we had an excellent showing form all our business and law disciplines.

Medical and health research in particular, received exceptional ERA recognition. Of the medical and health disciplines, 11 out of 12 achieved the top rating as ‘well above’ world standard with psychology also rating ‘well above’ world standard across all its assessed research fields. Remarkably, 100% of Deakin research was rated at or above world standard (up from 90% in 2015 and 40% in 2010).

These reports affirm Deakin is continuing to improve the quality and impact of its research in world terms, and that it’s research is making a difference to the communities we serve.

I do hope you enjoy reading this month’s dKin Times, be very proud of your alma mater, and don’t forget to consider nominating an outstanding alumnus for the Deakin Alumni Awards.

Jane den Hollander AO

President and Vice-Chancellor