Melbourne Connect

Brought together by a shared connection to Sea Country, Victorian College of the Arts students Alice Attwood, Anathema Violet-Harris and Emma Salmon explore their connection to Country through weaving, storytelling and performance.   See Spirit: Night and Sea alongside three other commissioned works by First Nations artists, each offering a distinct creative perspective, on display at the mezzanine level of Melbourne Connect until 4 September as part of Wilin Connect.   Wilin Connect is a collaborative initiative between the Wilin Centre, Melbourne Connect and Lendlease, supporting First Nations artists and their creative voices.

This August, Melbourne Connect was a launchpad for conversations shaping how we live and work with emerging technology and for students taking their next step into industry. The Graeme Clark Oration by the Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering welcomed global tissue engineering pioneer Dr Milica Radisic from the University of Toronto. She took us inside organ-on-a-chip technology and the science of building functional human tissue, offering a glimpse into the future of personalised regenerative medicine. At our AI at Melbourne Colloquium, PhD researcher Yilin Geng explored what large language models have inherited from us beyond language itself, from social signals and persuasion to the ways human behaviour can shape AI. That question of trust continued in a conversation with The Comms Network on navigating misinformation in health and science communication, and how we can communicate evidence in ways that build credibility. Closing out the month, the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology Graduate Research Showcase and the University of Melbourne's Internships and Jobs Fair brought students, industry, business and government together, connecting Australia's top STEM PhD talent with opportunities to collaborate, commercialise research and build careers.

New discoveries in geometry, cryptography and coding theory are being attributed to AI. Large language models are already reshaping how mathematics is researched, taught and published. The technology is forcing mathematicians to reconsider not only how they do mathematics, but why. If AI can make mathematical discoveries, what makes human creativity valuable? Who gets the credit when AI contributes? Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/gQVEXbKH

From 7–11 September, come get inspired and connect with Melbourne's innovation community. Get a glimpse of what's in store at Melbourne Connect Innovation Week. Hear former Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers unpack what's really coming next in tech, learn what it takes to get funded from leading women in venture capital, and explore what it'll take to close the gap in global health outcomes with The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. Plus, more thought-provoking conversations on the ideas shaping our future. Plan your visit and explore the full festival program: https://lnkd.in/eCsfETrU  #MCIW2026 Featuring University of Melbourne, NTT DATA, Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre, Commonwealth Bank.

For many small and medium-sized businesses, cybersecurity still feels like a luxury. Josh Brown, Managing Director at Global Tech Partners, and his team are working to change that. His advice? Regular training, strong security habits, and consistent basics like patching, access management and backups go a long way. Global Tech Partners are one example of the diverse range of organisations calling Melbourne Connect Co-working home, helping businesses across the region build the security foundations they need to innovate with confidence. Explore our co-working community: https://lnkd.in/gcHrQaVx

AI often needs thousands of images to train effectively, but building those datasets can be difficult in fields like healthcare, manufacturing and agriculture. University of Melbourne researchers and their collaborators have developed a new method, GenMix, which carefully transforms existing images to expand limited datasets while preserving the details that matter. It's a promising approach to one of AI's biggest challenges: how do we build better models when good data is scarce? Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gwyCau5Q

The 2026 Graeme Clark Oration offered a window into a new era of drug discovery, where personalised treatments, reduced animal testing and labs that use robots and AI to fast-track and scale-up production are becoming a reality. Hosted by the Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering, the Oration brings a global leader in biomedical research to Melbourne each year to make extraordinary science accessible to everyone. 🔗 Tap to read more → https://unimelb.me/4bU4Mdc The Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences University of Melbourne Melbourne Connect

From AI and robotics to the next wave of founders, Melbourne Connect Innovation Week returns 7–11 September to explore the ideas and technologies shaping the future. Across 40 events, explore how we live alongside AI and robots at Who’s Caring? Robots, AI and the Art of Being Together, discover over 30 emerging AI and robotics ventures at the AI & Robotics Innovation Expo, and hear from founders and leading women VCs at the MEC Showcase and Fireside Talk. Meet leading thinkers, experience emerging technologies and discover how partnerships across universities, industry, government and startups are turning ideas into real-world impact. Explore the full program and register here: https://lnkd.in/eCsfETrU  With The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre, Science Gallery Melbourne, AIBUILD, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.