L-R: Associate Professor Pedro Fidelman (UQ Centre for Policy Futures), Dr Miguel Frohlich (UQ Centre for Policy Futures), Dr Beth Toki (BMT), and Professor Annemaree Carroll (Associate Dean Research, UQ Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences).
The Blue Economy CRC congratulates Dr Miguel Frohlich – recipient of The University of Queensland Early to Mid-Career Researcher (EMCR) Industry Engagement Award for 2023.
The awards celebrate high-impact and collaborative research partnerships between EMCRs and industry, with 15 projects awarded across the University’s faculties and institutes.
Dr Frohlich was awarded for his work on the Mapping and analysis of Blue Economy policy and legislative arrangements project, with project partners BMT, State Government of Tasmania, University of Queensland and UTAS.
The project, completed in July 2021, produced Australia’s first comprehensive mapping of Australia’s regulatory landscape, leveraging an innovative network graphing approach to identify gaps and overlaps.
It mapped existing policy and legislative environment as they relate to blue economy uses, activities and resources across multiple sectors and jurisdictions and undertook cross-sector analyses to identify gaps and overlaps that may hinder the development and operation of blue economy activities with a focus on those relating to integrated seafood and energy production systems.
The project aimed to help reduce industry uncertainty and empower stakeholders to make informed decisions for a sustainable blue economy.
To ensure a successful collaboration between researchers and industry, Miguel and his team actively involved industry and government stakeholders from the start, ensuring their continuous input and collaboration and held regular team meetings to facilitate open dialogue, discuss progress, tackle challenges, and integrate the expertise and insights of our industry and government partners into the research process.
As Dr Frohlich states,
“Industry and government partners played a crucial role in the success of this research project, contributing unique engagement and skills that were instrumental in achieving the research objectives.”
UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Deborah Terry AO recognised the need to connect with industry, government and the non-profit sector to develop an effective innovation ecosystem in Queensland and ensure that UQ research translates into tangible outcomes in the community.
“The task of incubating new knowledge – and pushing at the boundaries of knowledge – will always be a core function of every great university. However, it’s also very important to acknowledge that the process of translating our research discoveries into innovation simply does not – and cannot – happen in isolation.
“And this is the reason why we, at UQ, are placing an increasing emphasis on ensuring that our researcher community is actively engaged in collaborating with partners beyond the boundaries of our campus.”
On behalf of the Blue Economy CRC team, we congratulate Dr Miguel Frohlich on this award and his contribution to our future blue economy.
