10 March 2020
The University of South Australia has appointed Professor Frank Wagner to a strategic new role at UniSA, dedicated to firing up global industry engagement and end-user focused partnerships at UniSA and delivering benefits to South Australia.
An engineer with more than 25 years’ experience, most recently Prof Wagner was head of Strategic R&D management at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, part of Fraunhofer, Europe's largest application-oriented research organisation.
He will join UniSA as Dean of Industry and Enterprise, working to the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, to grow the University’s already strong reputation for industry partnership and research that is focussed on solving problems and delivering tangible benefits to industry and society.
Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Enterprise, Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington says Prof Wagner’s appointment is a coup for the University and the State.
“Frank’s expertise in building vital links between research and industry, and in doing that on a global scale, will connect the great research innovations being made at the University to the fields where they can be applied - in manufacturing, defence, space, government policy, business and health,” Prof Hughes-Warrington says.
“The Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked UniSA number one in Australia for industry research income and that’s evidence of our industry engaged approach. With this appointment we want to step that up a notch and develop stronger local and global partnerships to benefit business and the community.”
Prof Wagner first studied technical cybernetics at the University of Stuttgart, before becoming a Research Associate at its Institute for Human Factors and Technology Management IAT, in the department of computer-aided engineering systems.
He worked in a similar research role at Fraunhofer IAO in the 1990s and from 1997 to 2018 was head of its Competence Centre R&D Management and was appointed to the steering committee of the Institute’s Industrial Engineering IAO.
Moving between academic work and management leadership, Professor Wagner has been a senior lecturer at the University of Stuttgart for Technology Management and a member of the Science and Engineering Faculty as an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
He has more than 50 publications in the area of engineering and R&D management and has co-authored German engineering guidelines for simulation and product data management systems.
He has developed long-term research partnerships for both Fraunhofer and the University of Stuttgart with technology companies such as BMW, Danfoss, Bosch, Hexagon, Arcelik, Embraco and Festo.
Prof Wagner says he is excited to be joining the University of South Australia, where he believes there is enormous potential to build on an established reputation for industry engagement.
“UniSA’s research approach combines a commitment to quality with a focus on research that matters; that has the capacity to influence and make positive change.
“Working in that environment with researchers and administrators who are excited to make a difference, dedicated to quality and appreciate the benefits of research informed by industry needs, is extremely rewarding and I am looking forward to joining a university that has such a strong reputation for enterprise.”
Media contact: Michèle Nardelli phone: +61 418 823 673 or +61 8 8302 0966 email: michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au
