The University of Melbourne's Research Institutes
A Global Research Powerhouse
The University of Melbourne is committed to cross-disciplinary research, creating opportunities for the best minds to work together to tackle some of the world’s most challenging research problems and providing outstanding opportunities of training and developing a new generation of researchers.
To facilitate this, we recently established the Research Institutes. This series of virtual institutes will work together across all disciplines to support and showcase the diverse research programs taking place within the university and its associated academic, public and private sector organisations.
The premise is simple enough; to put researchers together and get them talking. Its delivery is broad-reaching and ambitious. Our Research Institutes will found new relationships between individual researchers and research teams on campus and around the world. They will help nurture fledgling connections and strengthen proven partnerships.
To date, there are four such Research Institutes; the Melbourne Energy Institute (www.energy.unimelb.edu.au), the Melbourne Materials Institute (www.materials.unimelb.edu.au), Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au), and the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society (www.broadband.unimelb.edu.au).
Why research?
By nature, research is an eccentric practise. It requires venturing into unknown or little known territory with a professional view that something rewarding lies just beyond the horizon.
In today's society, such educated guesswork is at odds with a public demand for instant results. Research may not produce instant results but it does produce the best results. Results that are well considered, proven and durable.
But this takes time, and taking time without definitive outcomes isn’t fashionable. No wonder research is the problem child of many less future-focused universities. Of the countless wry statements about research compiled over centuries, many ring true.
Research is indeed, as Plutarch said, "the act of going up alleys to see if they are blind". Even renowned rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, admitted that "research is what I’m doing when I don't know what I’m doing".
But by definition, a university which doesn't involve itself in research is no university at all.
As a research institution of international renown, the University of Melbourne seeks to open new paths to scientific understanding and to support critical and creative endeavour in fields beyond conventional research paradigms.
As a public-spirited institution, Melbourne declares its intention to make research serve public ends. This includes taking up pressing societal and environmental problems, and promoting inquiry and open debate based on evidence and reason. As an internationally engaged institution, Melbourne undertakes to work with overseas colleagues to meet global challenges with intelligence, ingenuity and respect for humanity.
Our new Research Institutes will be the nexus between the university's intentions, innovative ideas and world changing applications. These institutes aim to generate a direct connection between expectations, innovations and outcomes across all the university’s arenas of research.