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The University of Canterbury excels at research. It has an excellent track record of transforming unique research IP into world class commercial entities.
Canterprise, the commercial arm of UC, was a recent winner of the Supreme Award for Small Enterprise at the Champion Canterbury Awards.
The University's commercial successes are illustrated by the following examples:
Whisper Tech, a company founded in the research labs of the Faculty of Engineering, recently signed $300 million agreement with a UK power company to supply its revolutionary personal power stations' to its customers.
UC-borne company, Syft Technologies, winner of New Zealand's Most Innovative Product of the Year, has commercialised the Selective Ion Flow Tube (SIFT) mass spectrometry technology for the global marketplace.
Able to detect minute traces of airborne chemicals, the Super Nose is gaining the interest of biosecurity agencies in Europe and the USA. Syft has recently secured a $2 million deal with Australian customs.
Nano Cluster Devices, based at UC, and led by executive director Simon Brown is developing a world first technology – self assembling nanowires.
Brown and his team of 20 staff have created a Nanocluster using nanowires, which is poised to make the silicon microchip obsolete. The discovery was the cover feature of the April 2005 edition of the prestigious Semiconductor International magazine. Nano Cluster Devices' technology has been picked up by US based company NanoDynamics Inc, which is now marketing it in the United States.
A three-dimensional virtual picture book developed at the University of Canterbury's HITLabNZ has been named as a New Zealand finalist for the World Summit Awards. The eyeMagic project developed by the HIT Lab NZ explores the application of augmented-reality technology to children's literature.
Using the technology, Bishop's story Giant Jimmy Jones was transformed from a normal printed book into one where three-dimensional animated virtual images appear to pop up from the real pages. The book was developed while Bishop was the Ursulla Bethell writer-in-residence at the University.