Innovation Challenges

Swinburne's CIC will work with nominating customers to tackle problems and opportunities of significance to local communities, with all artefacts and code created to be accessible and published as open source to maximise social impact.​

We are the eighth CIC globally and the first in the Southern Hemisphere, bringing together four of Swinburne’s flagship Research Institutes to create an unprecedented research ecosystem as part of a long-term collaboration between Swinburne and Amazon Web Services. Swinburne's CIC aims to boost methods and technology for incubating data for social good by addressing pressing challenges associated with the health, wellbeing and social inclusiveness of society, in partnership with public-sector, education and not-for-profit organisations.​ 
 

What constitutes a challenge?

Challenges will be undertaken by Swinburne students under the mentorship and direction of Swinburne researchers and industry subject matter experts, with the twin aims of providing value to clients while training the next generation of cloud and analytics practitioners. Challenges are of 8-10 weeks duration, during which time tangible proofs-of-concept are developed with supporting proposed architecture to enable customers to further develop into full-fledged services. Each challenge can thereby be thought of as a product development accelerator that identifies technology options and may result in a prototype design, leveraging Amazon’s proven innovation methodologies. ​

Who can submit a challenge?

We would welcome the opportunity to engage and support government departments and agencies, not-for-profit bodies and education providers to identify and deliver proof-of-concepts of new programs and services, providing them with a cost-effective digital innovation channel, and students with varied and topical real-world experience. The aim is to publish the outputs from each challenge and thereby encourage collaboration and scaling among like-minded public sector organisations from domestically and internationally.​
 

Who will work on challenges?​

​Each challenge will be delivered by a combination of Swinburne researchers, industry partners and Swinburne students, with the dedicated support of Swinburne and Amazon staff.  This unique combination of expertise, speed and enthusiasm ensures we can rapidly translate the needs of customers into meaningful solutions.

​Our CIC is located within Swinburne’s Innovation Precinct at the Hawthorn campus in Melbourne.  The Innovation Precinct opened in 2018 following a $7 million redevelopment of the Hawthorn fire station.  It is a central point for connecting the university’s research and innovation capabilities, and a place for staff and students to collaborate with industry, solve challenges, and produce commercial outcomes.​