CSIRO Highlights 2022

We strive to be an employer of choice, building Australia’s 
future talent pipeline and attracting the world's best to work 
in a place that unleashes their full potential. 

Research Technician Virginia Mwape, with a liquid handling 
robot that dispenses a selected quantity of reagent, 
samples or other liquid to a designated container.



Chief Executive foreword

For more than a century, your national science agency, 
CSIRO, has been solving the greatest challenges through 
innovative science and technology. We work with research 
and industry to turn science into real-world solutions, 
we deliver impartial science to inform government policy, 
and we invest in Australia’s future – from the breakthrough 
research that will reinvent our country to inspiring the 
next generation with the power of science. 

As Chief Executive, I’m so proud of everything Team CSIRO 
and our partners achieved together in 2022. This short 
collection of highlights is just a small snapshot of that 
incredible work. 

CSIRO has been there as Australia has faced new 
challenges like recent record floods and transitioning 
to net zero amid geopolitical disruption, as well as 
continuing to invest in long-term challenges like 
strengthening our national innovation performance and 
talent pipeline. We’ve launched new collaborative missions 
to bring broad coalitions together around ambitious 
goals, and we’ve grown investment in initiatives like the 
ON Accelerator and Main Sequence, established to manage 
the CSIRO Innovation Fund, to help create more companies 
and jobs from Australia’s great science. Our 2022 Annual 
Report at csiro.au/annualreport2022 contains many more 
examples of our impact.

Australia can only solve its greatest challenges by working 
together, and CSIRO stands ready with the full force of the 
national science agency to help you achieve our mutual 
vision of making life better for all Australians. In 2023 
and beyond, CSIRO will continue to be your partner in 
developing and delivering the solutions from science that 
will benefit our society, environment and economy today 
and into the future. 

Dr Larry Marshall
Chief Executive, CSIRO

In 2022

5,672 people 
delivering across 53 sites 
throughout Australia and globally.

160,000 students took 
part in our education programs.

We worked with 550 
international collaborators and 
customers across 69 countries.

For every $1 invested in CSIRO, 
at least $8.40 in value is 
returned to the Australian people.

Considering CSIRO's 2021–22
budget, this equates to 
$10.2 billion of benefit to the nation.

We engaged with over 4,000 
industry and government 
entities, including nearly 
1,600 small- to medium-sized 
businesses (SMEs).



Solving the greatest challenges

As Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO solves the greatest 
challenges through innovative science and technology. 

Towards Net Zero mission 

To support Australia’s move towards a low emissions 
economy, in 2022 we launched our Towards 
Net Zero mission. 

The mission, which has initial co-investment of 
$90 million, is designed to help Australia’s regions and 
hard-to-abate industries transform and accelerate towards 
a low emissions economy. This large-scale scientific and 
collaborative research initiative is helping Australia’s 
hardest to abate sectors – including steel and agriculture – 
halve their emissions by 2035. 

The mission brings together CSIRO with government along 
with industry partners and collaborators and a number of 
universities and research organisations. 

Plantation farm forestry. 

Six challenges we are working with partners to solve:

Health and 
wellbeing

Enhance the health of Australians 
through preventative, personalised, 
biomedical, and digital 
health services.

• Supporting healthier lives
• Preparing for, and prevention 
against, infectious diseases
• Enabling transformation 
of the health care system
• Advancing manufactured 
products and technologies 
to support health


Food security 
and quality

Achieve sustainable security 
through new AgriFood products, 
technology and innovation 
for Australia.

• Agricultural productivity
• High value foods
• Trusted value chains
• Sustainable farm systems


Secure Australia 
and region

Help safeguard Australia from 
threats (terrorism, regional 
instability, pandemics, biosecurity, 
disasters, and cyber-attacks).

• Biosecurity
• Defence and security
• Sovereign resilience




National Vaccine and 
Therapeutics Lab 

To support the health and wellbeing of Australians, 
in 2022 we opened our $23.1 million National Vaccine 
and Therapeutics Lab in Melbourne. 

The lab is the ‘missing link’ in the Australian vaccine 
development pipeline, supercharging Australia's ability to 
produce vaccines and therapeutics locally. Researchers at 
the lab will turn vaccine and drug candidates into products 
that can be manufactured in large quantities for clinical 
trials, which has previously had to be done overseas. 

The new lab follows a successful pilot facility in the early 
stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when CSIRO scaled up 
vaccine candidates that had been developed onshore as 
part of a national strategy to combat this emerging threat. 

CSIRO's new National Vaccine and Therapeutics Lab follows a 
successful pilot facility in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Resilient and valuable 
environments

Enhancing the resilience, sustainable 
use, and value of our natural and 
built environments, including by 
mitigating and adapting to the 
impacts of climate and global change.

• Climate resilience
• Water security
• Healthy ecosystems 
and biodiversity


Sustainable energy 
and resources

Build competitiveness, sustainability 
and security, nationally and 
regionally, of our energy and 
minerals systems and resources while 
lowering emissions to Net Zero.

• Electricity transition
• Industry and transport 
decarbonisation
• Unlock resources for a 
sustainable future


Future industries

Help create Australia's future 
industries and jobs by collaborating 
to boost innovation performance 
and promote Science, Technology, 
Engineering and Mathematics 
(STEM) skills.

• Future manufacturing
• Future digital industries
• Circular economy
• Innovation services




Missions

Our Missions program draws on our multidisciplinary science and 
research, and our track record of taking research through to impact, 
ensuring we focus on the issues that matter the most and affect our 
quality of life, our economy and our environment. 

Missions tackle big, multi-faceted problems by bringing 
together research agencies, universities, industry, 
government and community to work collaboratively on 
outcomes that lead to positive benefit, new jobs and 
economic growth.

They are explicitly directed at solving the most urgent and 
complex aspects of our national challenges, guided by big, 
bold and inspiring goals.

They begin as CSIRO Missions but due to their scale, 
ambition and collaborative nature, these missions are 
being co-developed with partners in Australia and 
overseas to achieve impact well beyond our organisation.

We are directing $100 million annually to the co‑creation 
of missions, working with the brightest minds across the 
research sector and industry to help Australia achieve 
these outcomes.

6

missions 
launched 

$359m

co-investment funding 
leveraged in support 
of launched missions 

571

mission originated 
projects 

Future 
Protein

Launched: September 2021

Goal: Leverage increasing global 
demand for high quality protein 
to create new Australian protein 
products and ingredients that earn an 
additional $10b in revenue by 2030.

Hydrogen 
Industry

Launched: May 2021

Goal: A globally competitive 
Australian hydrogen industry in 
2030 by lowering the cost of clean 
hydrogen to under $2 per kilogram.

Drought 
Resilience

Launched: September 2021

Goal: Reducing the impacts 
of Australian droughts by 
30 per cent by 2030.

Trusted 
Agrifood 
Exports

Launched: September 2021

Goal: Increase the value of 
Australian food export premiums by 
$10b by 2030, by building trust in the 
safety, quality, and provenance of 
our agrifood.

Ending 
Plastic 
Waste

Launched: March 2022

Goal: 80 per cent reduction 
in plastic waste entering the 
environment by 2030.

Towards 
Net Zero

Launched: October 2022

Goal: Bringing together research, 
industry, government, and communities 
to help Australia’s hardest to abate 
sectors – including steel, sustainable 
aviation fuel, and agriculture – halve 
their emissions by 2035.

Since 2020



Future Science Platforms

Our Future Science Platforms (FSPs) are investments in cutting‑edge 
research. They explore the future science that will reinvent and 
create new industries for Australia and develop capabilities in 
tomorrow's researchers. Since 2016, we have invested $425 million and 
recruited more than 200 early career researchers to work on our FSPs.

Adam Best is the Principal Research Scientist working on the 
Revolutionary Energy Storage Systems FSP.

Round

1

Deep Earth Imaging

Environomics

Round

2

Responsible Innovation

Precision Health

Hydrogen Energy Systems

Round

3

Space Technology

Artificial Intelligence 
and Machine Learning

Round

4

Quantum Technologies

Microbiomes

Valuing Sustainability

Autonomous Sensing

Collaborative Intelligence 

Round

5

Revolutionary Energy 
Storage Systems

Permanent Carbon Locking

Immune Resilience

Advanced Engineering Biology

Matured FSPs

The technology and outputs of these FSPs have 
transitioned to a new phase outside the FSP program.

Active Integrated Matter | 2017–22

Synthetic Biology | 2017–22

Probing Biosystems | 2017–22

Digiscape | 2017–22



Driving innovation

Solving Australia’s greatest challenges takes collaboration and innovation, 
which is why CSIRO has a range of programs to support the translation 
of Australia’s world-class science into real-world solutions. These are just 
a few of those programs. 

The ON Program 

In 2022, we celebrated the return of our successful 
ON Program. Since the program commenced in 
2015, ON has helped more than 3,000 people from 
52 Australian research organisations turn their science 
into real‑world solutions.

In December we announced the 10 teams from Australia’s 
universities and research institutes that will form the next 
cohort of ON Accelerate alumni. 

Working with industry mentors, coaches, and investors 
from Australia’s deep-tech venture capital community, 
ON Accelerate teams will develop the skills they need to 
launch research-driven companies into market.

Thaum, a startup team from the ANU Research School of Physics 
deep-tech incubator Momentum, in one of 10 teams chosen 
to prove their innovative venture WhalePOD through the 
ON Accelerate program.

SME Connect

In 2022, CSIRO’s SME Connect team facilitated more than 
200 projects to pair small- to medium-sized enterprises 
(SMEs) with research and development (R&D) support. 

One of these businesses was Coffee Roasters Australia, 
who were eager for the postbiotic coffee blend they 
had developed to have its health benefits assessed by 
independent research. 

Through Innovation Connections, CSIRO connected the 
small, Gold Coast-based business with immunology and 
infectious disease researchers at Griffith University, as well 
as providing matched funding to support the project.

To encourage more SMEs to seek R&D partnerships, 
this year CSIRO published Australia’s largest-ever survey 
about R&D collaboration, the Enablers and Barriers to 
Industry R&D Collaboration report, which found that 
businesses that collaborate with research institutions 
have higher levels of innovation, can better deal with 
uncertainty, and are more profitable.

Dave Granfield, Kirstie McConnell (reps for Coffee Roasters 
Australia), Mark Beattie, Alana Beattie (from Coffee Roasters 
Australia), Innovation Connections Facilitator Mitch McGuire and 
Griffith University Senior Lecturer Amanda Cox. 



Main Sequence

Main Sequence, the deep technology venture fund 
founded by CSIRO, invests in translating publicly funded 
Australian research into global companies that create jobs 
and grow our economy. 

Since 2017, Main Sequence has helped to build 50 deep 
technology companies, which have created over 
1,700 technology jobs. Every dollar invested by Main 
Sequence has attracted over $4.35 in co-investment 
from other venture funds, strategic investors and 
angel investors. 

They do this through turning science and research into 
breakthrough companies like Avarni, a decarbonisation 
startup working with the University of NSW to solve the 
challenge of emission target reporting.

Avarni's platform aggregates supply-chain and 
spending data to dramatically speed up the process 
of assessing, planning and monitoring carbon 
emissions across an organisation and its supply chain. 
It also allows organisations to forecast different 
decarbonisation scenarios.

Main Sequence invested in Avarni in 2022. To date, 
Avarni has analysed more than $100 billion in corporate 
spending data and 100 million tons of carbon 
dioxide equivalents in supply chains from public and 
private markets.

Main Sequence has invested in Avarni, which helps organisations 
forecast different decarbonisation scenarios, like using solar and 
wind power.

Industry PhD

In 2022, the CSIRO Industry PhD program (iPhD) 
progressed from its successful pilot phase to be available 
nationally, funded under the Australian government’s 
University Research Commercialisation program.

The iPhD program offers a 4-year scholarship for PhD 
students to undertake a co-designed research project 
intended to develop their ability to understand industry 
needs and translate research into commercial outcomes. 
The scholarship includes a 3-month industry engagement 
component, plus a professional development and training 
package. The student is jointly supervised by CSIRO, 
the industry partner and the host university. 

One of the projects developed as part of the iPhD's pilot 
phase is a partnership with biotechnology company 
Biosensis and the University of Adelaide. Through this 
project, a PhD student supported work to develop 
biosensors for early detection of Alzheimer's disease.

In 2023 the program is offering new projects in 
collaboration with partners across Australia in areas 
as diverse as microplastics in wastewater treatment, 
cyber security, community battery capability and 
fermented food production.

Industry PhD student Kym McNicholas examines nanoparticles for 
potential biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease.



Where to find us

We operate 50 sites across Australia and 3 sites overseas.

These include the world-class facilities we manage for the Australian research community, collaborative 
sites where we work closely with partners in industry and universities, and international locations where 
we facilitate global relationships.

We have accredited 
science counsellors 
attached to the 
Australian embassies 
in Singapore, Vietnam, 
Indonesia, and the USA. 



How to work with us

Partner with us

We collaborate with universities, research, and 
international agencies to deliver innovative science and 
technology. Organisations, large and small, capitalise on 
our solutions as catalysts for growth. Spanning a range 
of scientific disciplines across the various stages of the 
innovation lifecycle, we apply our research to inform 
policy, develop new industries and evolve existing sectors 
ensuring success into the future.

• Industry-focused research and development
• IP and commercialisation
• Funding and programs
• Commercial innovation services
• Accessible labs and facilities
• Global collaboration


Find out more about how to partner with us at: 
csiro.au/work-with-us

Our greatest hits

Fast WiFi

Aerogard

Polymer banknotes

Hendra vaccine

Our latest hits

PhotonAssay™ 
technology for 
gold analysis

Lunar testbed 
for space 
industry

Bushfire lab 
for national 
response

Vaccine lab 
for Australian 
capability

Investment in 
50 deep‑tech 
startups 

Join Team CSIRO

We’re recruiting the next generation of inventors, 
innovators and change makers. From researchers to 
support professionals, see what is possible for your career. 
Find out how to be a part of Team CSIRO at: csiro.au/iwu

CSIRO researchers working on flexible solar panel technology.



As Australia’s national science 
agency, CSIRO is solving 
the greatest challenges through 
innovative science and technology.

CSIRO. Unlocking a better future 
for everyone.

Contact

1300 363 400 
csiro.au/contact
csiro.au

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