2026 MQ Research IMPACT Program: Pitch Final

Join us for one of our key flagship events here at the Macquarie University Incubator, where our researchers will be pitching for non-equity-bearing seed funding to support their research. Last year we distributed $100K in funding to our researchers. It will be exciting to see what this year's cohort achieves.

Along the way, our researchers have learned new skills that will help them translate their research into real benefits for end users, raise funds, and make evidence-based decisions about the best pathway for maximum impact.

Meet Our Judges:

Hugh Durrant-Whyte | Chief Scientist and Engineer, NSW State Government
Hugh provides independent scientific and technical advice to the NSW Government on issues ranging from innovation and technology to major public policy challenges. He is a leading authority on robotics, autonomous systems and data science, with a career spanning academia, government and industry.

Before his current role, Hugh held senior leadership positions including CEO of Data61 (CSIRO's data and digital research arm) and NICTA, and was a professor at the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford, where his research focused on robotics and autonomous systems. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.

Hugh brings a rare and high-value combination of deep technical expertise and senior government and industry leadership experience to the panel, offering researchers insight into how research translates into policy impact and technology adoption at scale.

Melissa Mail | Director, Research Ventures & Investment. Macquarie University
Melissa is responsible for the recently launched Macquarie University $20M early-stage investment fund, which focuses on investing in Macquarie University research, students and startups within our Macquarie University Incubators.

She has experience working across the full innovation lifecycle, from early-stage research through to commercial outcomes, structuring transactions, navigating investment discussions and advising on complex licensing and IP deals. Before joining Macquarie, she held roles including Head of Commercialisation at the Children's Medical Research Institute; investment manager with university venture fund Uniseed, where she also served on its deep tech investment committee; and Commercial Theme Manager at the University of Sydney.

With hands-on experience building investment and commercialisation platforms from the ground up, Melissa brings a pragmatic, whole-of-organisation lens to the panel, cutting through complexity to assess what will genuinely hold up in practice.

Laura Droessler-Dansie | Investment Manager, Uniseed

Laura Droessler-Dansie is an Investment Manager at Uniseed, Australia's longest-running early-stage deep-tech venture fund, where she invests in and supports university spin-out companies emerging from Uniseed's partner universities and the CSIRO. She holds a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Oxford and moved into deep-tech investing after a career in technology transfer, including roles at Oxford, where she delivered a major international entrepreneurship program for university researchers on behalf of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and at UNSW, where she led the Physical Sciences commercialisation team across a broad portfolio including quantum technologies.

Laura brings a high value combination of hands-on research commercialisation experience and venture investment judgement to evaluating early-stage deep-tech opportunities.

DATE: Thursday, 17th September 2026

AGENDA:
2.00pm Registration, networking and judges briefing
2.20pm Welcome address by Hugh Durrant-Whyte, Chief Scientist & Engineer, NSW State Government
2.30pm Pitching and Q&A
3.30pm Judges deliberation
4.00pm Winners announced, Professor Sakkie Pretorius, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research
4.15pm Networking: meet the winners, researchers, founders, mentors, investors, and community
5.30pm Event concludes

We look forward to seeing you there!

Got questions or need more information? Reach out to the team on incubator@mq.edu.au

Contact the host of MQ Research IMPACT Program Pitch Final 2026