Episode 3 of Shaping Infrastructure podcast: UNSW Health Translation Hub – A Nexus of Innovation

Welcome to the third episode of Plenary’s podcast: UNSW Health Translation Hub – A Nexus of Innovation.

In this episode, we’re diving into the question: how can the co-location of different disciplines under the banner of a place-based approach lead to breakthroughs in any one field?

There’s no better site to examine this question than the UNSW Health Translation Hub, which opened late last year.

Spread across 35,600 square meters, the UNSW Health Translation Hub brings together educational and medical researchers, clinicians, educators, industry partners and public health officials – all within the Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct.

Join various experts who have been instrumental in the Hub’s development, and chart how it’s set to revolutionise the landscape of healthcare, medical research and health education in Australia and beyond.

Host: Sonia Nair, Plenary Group Communications and Content Manager

Guests:

• Sergio Calcarao, Plenary Group Head of Development
• Zoe Terpening, UNSW Pro Vice-Chancellor – Precincts
• Matthew Todd, Architectus Principal
• Kristan Elvish, Plenary Group Executive Director
• Kiri Collins, Children’s Cancer Institute Head of Built Environment and Infrastructure
• Sacha Coles, ASPECT Studios Global Design Director
• Jean-Frédéric Levesque, Deputy Secretary, Clinical Innovation and Research, NSW Health and Chief Executive, Agency for Clinical Innovation
• George Rolfe, Plenary Group Head of Property
• Cheryl Jones, UNSW Dean of Medicine and Health
• Sam Sangster, Klok Advisory Managing Director
• Hon Jillian Skinner AM, Former NSW Health Minister, current Board Director, Ambassador and Patron

Full transcript:

Sonia Nair: Welcome to Shaping Infrastructure, the podcast from Plenary where we explore the transformative power of smart, well-planned public infrastructure.  

I’m your host Sonia Nair. In this episode, we’re diving into the question: how can the co-location of different disciplines under the banner of a place-based approach lead to breakthroughs in any one field?

There’s no better site to examine this question than the UNSW Health Translation Hub, which opened late last year.

Spread across 35,600 square meters, the UNSW Health Translation Hub brings together educational and medical researchers, clinicians, educators, industry partners and public health officials – all within the Randwick Health & Innovation Precinct.

The Hub is situated alongside adult and paediatric health facilities, a women’s hospital, a private hospital and numerous research institutes in a significant corridor of health delivery in southeastern Sydney.

It facilitates interactions that will not only culminate in clinical innovations, but accelerate their translations into the real healthcare system and transform the very way we provide care.

In this latest episode, we delve into the fascinating journey that led to the opening of this groundbreaking institution. We talk to various experts who have been instrumental in the Hub’s development, and chart how it’s set to revolutionise the landscape of healthcare, medical research and health education in Australia and beyond.

Genesis and vision of the Hub

Sonia Nair: UNSW Health Translation Hub may have opened its doors in 2025, but the facility has been decades in the making. Pro Vice-Chancellor Precincts at UNSW, Professor Zoe Terpening, looks back on the decades of collaboration and vision that underpins the Hub.

Zoe Terpening: If you go back in the history of the Randwick Hospital Campus site, there’s letters to and from the hospitals to the university, dreaming of a time when those two campuses would come together and we would do things in a single space.

So, for almost 65 years, all the partners had worked towards this sort of North Star of what the future could look like, and this was realised with the UNSW Health Translation Hub.

So, the UNSW Health Translation Hub never set out to replace what already exists. It was always the final piece in a grand masterplan for the site here at Randwick. It was intended to be the fulcrum or final piece of connecting tissue between all of the buildings and activities on the site, a neutral space that would enable that translation to occur, because this was always about: how do we get world-class ideas to the patient bedside and how do we do that as quickly as possible? Each partner in the project brings something unique to that, and its distinct identity lies in being the place where that translation can occur.

A Hub with a difference

Sonia Nair: The ambitious goal of uniting multiple disciplines under the auspices of the Hub wasn’t without its challenges.

Dr Jean-Frédéric Levesque is a man who wears many hats – he’s the Chief Executive of the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation, and the Deputy Secretary, Clinical Innovation and Research at the NSW Ministry of Health.

One challenge of any place-based approach, according to him, is ensuring the ethos transcends the structure.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: There is a risk that, basically, you just bring the same people that were working together before. And you don’t challenge their worldviews; you don’t challenge the innovation that they are progressing with the addition of new people. And, really, precincts should make a priority in attracting people that may sit in other universities, may sit in other districts, because they needed [sic] co-located with those other experts to drive those new ways to think, those disruptive, innovative ways to deliver care. We need to challenge that view for them to really be the places where the value-add is created and new areas of research gets created.

Sonia Nair: Plenary Managing Director Sergio Calcarao considers the friction of competing priorities.

Sergio Calcarao: The challenges previously in co-locating a variety of disciplines, particularly when you consider the different tensions and drivers of industry and teaching and research, is that in reality, they aren’t necessarily aligned in their outcomes.

There’s certainly been the biomedical precincts and IT precincts and health precincts delivered around the world. But the interesting thing about the Health Translation Hub is that it was integrating all of those aspects into one building.

Sonia Nair: To address these challenges, Professor Terpening says the team went past the simple, potentially limiting, idea of mere co-location.

Zoe Terpening: What we learnt was that co-location was never going to be enough. That, in fact, if you wanted to achieve the objectives that we had for this particular building, collision and collaboration and trust between the partners was going to be critically important.

Sonia Nair: Plenary’s Project Lead on the UNSW Health Translation Hub, Kristan Elvish says this is the Hub’s crucial point of difference.

Kristan Elvish: Globally, the Netherlands, Germany, UK, and the US all have university towns that co-locate with large health and life sciences organisations, albeit they probably weren’t designed that way originally.

Where the Hub differs is that it’s a central building that interconnects into public, into private, educational and tertiary educational space. The examples overseas are more akin to campus-style developments. So, from a scale perspective, they’re comparable, but from a cluster of the public, private and research all within one building, I’m not familiar of that and I’m definitely not familiar with that locally in Australia.

Sonia Nair: Having worked across many different settings in many different countries, Dr Levesque says what renders the UNSW Health Translation Hub unique is its sheer interconnectedness in the context of Sydney.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: What Sydney has to offer and what the Health Translation Hub has to offer is that it’s also part of a network of precincts. All across the city, we’ve got those places where a slightly different kind of approach is being taken or different clinical areas or different clinical innovation areas are being adopted as well, and therefore, there is a specific value-add to that centre which, I think, really positions us very well for the future.

Sonia Nair: Former NSW Health Minister and the state’s first ever standalone Minister for Medical Research, Jillian Skinner AM, has been involved in discussions about the Hub since 2015 and speaks of its expansiveness.

Jillian Skinner: It’s got a floor for almost like a museum or a gallery of new technology, future ideas in technology. It’s got a space where families can go to learn about the kind of treatments that would be available for their children. Where researchers can go, can live and work alongside the clinicians that they might have only met a couple of times as they run across the road with their samples. It’s got a place for students to learn. It’s got huge potential going forward and also to showcase to industry how their investment can make a huge difference, not only to the way university teach, but also to the way the treatment is then delivered.

The nuts and bolts

Sonia Nair: UNSW tasked consultancy Klok Advisory, who specialise in precincts, with leading the procurement process for the development of the Hub. Klok Advisory Managing Director Sam Sangster says the financial transaction that kickstarted the development was unusual for several reasons.

Sam Sangster: The funding structure in the Health Translation Hub was pretty complex in some ways and simple in others. The university was looking at this as both a base building and as requiring a fit-out for quite a complex set of arrangements, and so the transaction needed to accommodate that.

Fundamentally, it starts with a ground lease that underpins the transaction. So, it’s not freehold land. It’s land that is and remains in the ownership of Health [NSW], which is leased to the university who is then on-subleasing it to the development entities – which obviously Plenary was, in effect, the project lead and lead finance arranger as well as the development manager.

Plenary then put together a funding package that involved not only its own equity but also then sourced money from two superannuation funds who are long-term investors who both had very strong connectivity and philosophical alignment with the project in HESTA and UniSuper.

And I think the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle – without giving away all of the IP – is really understanding how the university, as a tenant of 70% of the building, could actually underpin and provide a level of credit worthiness for the overall transaction that the parties are actually able to put money in at such competitive rates. And so, it is much more structured along an infrastructure line than a real property play.

Sonia Nair: UNSW’s partnership with Plenary brought in crucial commercial and leasing expertise during a challenging time – the onset of COVID-19. Sergio recounts why private capital was best placed to do this.

Sergio Calcarao: The University of New South Wales came to market with the Health Translation Hub looking for a partner to deliver the project and take risk. But as part of that solution, private capital was able to provide them additional value by not only just taking the risk, but by monetising the value of their commitment over the 25,000 square meters of space that they were taking in the Health Translation Hub building and giving them an upfront land payment as well as an amazing asset for their researchers, their students, and their teachers.

Sonia Nair: Plenary’s Head of Property George Rolfe says the way in which Plenary applies an infrastructure mindset to property was well-suited to the UNSW Health Translation Hub transaction.

George Rolfe: Infrastructure mindset is typically long-term and reduced risk. From a property perspective, a lot of property participants are shorter-term and higher risk. So, bringing that long-term approach, but with a property structure, is something quite advantageous and something that can develop a long-term partnership.

Challenges and silver linings of COVID

Sonia Nair: How do architecture, design and medical teams, used to brainstorming ideas in person and relying on physical materials, transition to an exclusively online setup while conceiving the design of an incredibly complex institution during a challenging time – the onset of COVID-19?

As challenging as it was, Kiri Collins – Head of Built Environment and Infrastructure at the Children’s Cancer Institute, which is co-located in the Hub – said it turned out to be a blessing.

Kiri Collins: So we had all of these incredible minds, the best and the brightest that were wondering, what do I do with my time now? And at that point in time, that was an opportunity for me to say: have I got a project for you! So, we worked really closely together all the way through the design phase with the typical types of people that we wouldn’t necessarily be able to get a whole lot of dedicated time with. And we had the most wonderful conversations that were so rich in content and just in understanding what they really needed and they had a lot of time to be able to think about what the future might need to look like for them.

Sonia Nair: Professor Terpening says it’s fitting the resourcefulness that informed the UNSW Health Translation Hub’s construction from the outset was symptomatic of the large-scale innovation happening in healthcare at the very same time.  

Zoe Terpening: If you think back to that time, there was a lot of innovation in the health system. We were doing things on the fly. We were creating new ways of getting people tested and vaccinated. And we could see that the door was open to really transform the health system in a way it hadn’t experienced before.

Sonia Nair: Part of the job of Architectus as designers of the Hub was pushing the dial on what a hybrid workplace could look like, particularly in the aftermath of COVID. Architectus Principal Matthew Todd looks back on this.

Matthew Todd: How has the workplace changed? How has the interaction between the different groups – what has changed and how do we respond as designers to that? Less offices, more flexible space, more bookable spaces, different furniture settings that you can choose throughout the day. In the corporate space, maybe that’s not new, but for the university, that’s still moving the needle quite hard.

Sonia Nair: There was an initial resistance to the Hub’s modular, non-traditional workspaces, which gave way to a celebration of them, according to Professor Terpening.

Zoe Terpening: So, within a university – particularly one that has been around for 75 years – we have sort of quite traditional academic settings. And shifting a large group of people into an environment where we’ve deliberately disrupted the way space works – we created a new modular design, we had different types of spaces than they might have experienced previously. Initially there was quite strong resistance to that.

But when I take people through the UNSW Health Translation Hub, without fail, someone in that building will stop the tour group and have a very long conversation about the quality of the space, and the design and the experience of that building. That’s not staged, and it happens on nearly every tour, but it’s something that tells me that we got those things right, even though at the time the decisions were made, that was a very bold vision for our organisation.

Sonia Nair: Professor Cheryl Jones, the Dean of Medicine and Health at UNSW, who now works within the Hub, attests to the magnetism of the building.

Cheryl Jones: People come into this heart, into this incredible building. All in the beautiful foyer is open to the community, open to the public. And that actually creates a meeting space that people are using. I mean I’ve seen people in these last four or five months that I’ve never seen in person.

Love and respect of Country

Sonia Nair: An inextricable component of placemaking that informed the Hub’s beautiful design was Country. The consortium worked with First Nations design consultants Yerrabingin, led by Christian Hampson, to integrate an adherence to First Nations design principles and a reverence for the unique landscape into the Hub’s construction, according to Matthew.

Matthew Todd: It’s Bidgigal Gadigal Country. Looking at Country as medicine – that’s the work that Christian and his team were working on and trying to synthesise that into a design.

That’s a key driver of the landscape design, the building design. And it’s embedded in our design process, and we worked with Yerrabingin and ASPECT Studios very closely on the origin story, if you like, of the site and the place.

Sonia Nair: Sacha Coles, Global Design Director of landscape architects ASPECT Studios, says the backdrop of the Hub’s site was pivotal in the conception of its design.

Sacha Coles: We all shared the ambition that this particular Country should inform the design outcomes. And so, what that means is understanding the long history of site, a kind of a back dunal site – very sandy, and it falls off the ridge from Randwick down into the Botany Sands, and so it used to be a contributing part, and it still is, to the Botany Aquifer.

So, there’s a water story there, there’s a sand story there, there’s a wind story there being up on the ridge. All of these things we’ve used from even the shape of the facade in the building – sort of wind-shaped – through to the scattering of furniture, through to the materials in the ground plane – very sandy-coloured – through to the use of the water jets in the landscape. All of those things actually tie back to the tens of thousands of years of occupation and use and connection with country by First Peoples and their stories.

A social heart

Sonia Nair: Fundamental to the Hub’s success is its ability to promote ‘collision, collaboration, and trust’ among diverse disciplines, breaking down traditional silos. This is something Professor Terpening knows quite a bit about – being a clinician and researcher herself.

Zoe Terpening: I guess I’ve lived the frustration of having really good ideas or working with teams who were trying to innovate and move the health system forward into a new future of what it could look like and the barriers that you encounter and those friction points that stop you moving forward with some of those ideas.

And what the HTH has been able to do is curate a number of spaces that break those barriers down. We were able to arrange this particular building to bring all those people together, to have them co-located, to not have organisational boundaries between where they sat on the floor, and also allow them the spaces to bump and collide.

And my experience of the building to date has been the magic that happens in those communal spaces. And that’s where I think we’ll start to see those really amazing innovations in health coming from.

Sonia Nair: Kiri reflects on what this means in practice for the Minderoo Children’s Comprehensive Cancer Centre.

Kiri Collins: Bench-to-bedside is a concept that we use quite a lot to communicate the relationship between research and clinical care and health. And we know actually that there’s a lot of iterative conversations that happen between researchers and clinicians as part of that healthcare journey for a patient. That’s so important and we need to have it constantly.

And it’s not through scheduled meetings, it’s happening by chance – running into each other organically, catching up in the tearoom for lunch, or, you know, even having an elevator pitch, because there are so many elevators now, which is great. We have to keep talking to each other all the time in order to make sure that we’re delivering the best care that we possibly can for these kids and their families.

Cross-functionality

Sonia Nair: The social heart of the Hub is enlivened by the various pre-eminent professionals, coming together under one roof. Dr Levesque foresees magical things ensuing as a result of this alchemy.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: Having a broad variety of experts in a single place – clinicians, researchers, people that are training other people, students, partners from industry, and also people that are running the health system – is really creating that opportunity for tackling what we often call ‘wicked problems’, problems that have really been present in various healthcare systems for a long time.

Sometimes you’re going to get, you know, solutions that you didn’t expect from the start, a very disruptive idea that kind of reorients the course in that specific area of science or innovation. It’s really variable and sometimes unpredictable. And that’s the point of it.

Sonia Nair: The Hub has a genius bar for clinicians, modelled after Apple Stores – a unique feature where clinicians can bring real-world problems directly to researchers and engineers, fostering cross-disciplinary solutions, according to Kiri.

Kiri Collins: Now that we’re physically located in the same space together, we’re now engaging a lot more with allied health, the nursing community and, you know, with all of these different disciplines within the clinician community that we wouldn’t typically be interacting with.

We’re getting that full spectrum of researchers from the discovery scientists that are really looking at the fundamentals of cancer all the way through to what we refer to as our dry lab researchers, you know, a lot of those that are not so much working in that typical wet laboratory environment, but really looking at the data and how artificial intelligence can support childhood cancer journeys and what those outcomes are. So, you’re just seeing this whole dynamic of all of these different skillsets that are all coming in together into the one space.

We don’t know what we don’t know and we need to bring all of these people and all of these disciplines in together into the one spot and allow for them to explore the unknown together – rather than it being dictated to them through more formal structures and processes.

Sonia Nair: Professor Terpening outlines how the Hub’s research missions play to the strengths of the many organisations within it.

Zoe Terpening: There were a number of disciplines around dementia and neurodegenerative disorders, around disability health, around cancer survivorship that were natural strengths for this particular Randwick Health and Innovation precinct.

And we had the right clustering of parts to really make those giant quantum leaps in those fields. And I think some of the work that we’re doing currently in genomics and personalised medicine has been a really good example of how that’s working very well.

Permeability

Sonia Nair: When it comes to how the Hub sits in the precinct, Matthew of Architectus says they had to design it as both an anchor and a landmark based upon the principles of connectivity and permeability.

Matthew Todd: And what I mean by that is that it’s open, transparent, and welcoming for all. And that’s really critical given the wide array of people that’ll be coming to the Health Translation Hub.

Sonia Nair: This outside-in approach is central to the Hub’s attraction, according to Dr Levesque.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: The Health Translation Hub, like many other precincts, have this outward look internationally as well as this more inward look about how, on a local basis, they’re going to be the catalyst of change.

There’s going to be companies from other places that will be interested to come and collaborate with the Hub if they see that it provides the concentration of experts, and the diversity of experts, that’s required to progress some of their commercially led innovation. And, in return, local industry partners can attract international researchers and experts.

It’s about bringing to the neighbourhood those people from outside, as well as people from neighbouring local districts or universities, so that we create that localised kind of synergy between those different players.

Sustainability

Sonia Nair: The UNSW Health Translation Hub was designed with sustainability at its forefront, with a Six-Star Green Star rating target – the world’s best – in alignment with UNSW’s net zero goals. Matthew says the consortium’s integrated approach to sustainability spanned landscape, climate and digital resilience.

Matthew Todd: All buildings, you have a responsibility to the local context and the challenges were: it sits in an area of local flooding. And there’s the light rail system that needs to be obviously operational as public transport. So, part of that was a large-scale water storage on site. And there’s also things like flood gates and adjustments to the level. So, the building contributes positively to climate resilience, in terms of managing that for the building, but also for the surrounding neighbourhood.

And then digital future. So, the digital resilience – how do we deal with the unknown knowns, I suppose, of digital future? It’s really about the resilience of the building over time. So, how it can adapt and change to be flexible for the anchor tenant, the University of New South Wales, and then the other tenants, and how that changes? The building can change over time without undoing everything. So, it allows for adjustments, increase in the level of digital connectivity across the floor plates. Also, just in terms of building, measuring and censoring – so, adjusting the air-conditioning systems and things to accommodate different sort of peaks and troughs and climates.

Sonia Nair: Not one element of the Hub is merely for show, according to Professor Terpening, with each material, design and plant species standing for something.

Zoe Terpening: You see it permeate through the design of the building, the selection of the glass, the way in which the two and a half thousand square meters of green space allow you to interact with Indigenous plants and other elements that are specifically designed to incorporate the sustainable materials and wellbeing aspects to the building. So, they were never intended to be just decorative elements on another building, they were to be at the heart of what we as an institution and what our partners stand for.

Equity and inclusion

Sonia Nair: There’s not much point to medical breakthroughs if they can’t be scaled at mass to reach those who need it the most, a fact that’s expertly encapsulated by Professor Jones.

Cheryl Jones: If we make a discovery and we haven’t got it equitable access to all parts of our community, then I don’t think that’s a true innovation. So I think it’s also making sure that we really work with all parts of the community to make sure they have access to these discoveries.

Sonia Nair: Dr Levesque foresees the Hub working to elevate questions of equity in new and exciting ways.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: More effective care, more efficient service delivery, innovative solutions that find new treatment – all of that is really important and key focus of precincts. But equity is very important as well.

The equity lens is provided to great extent by the health systems that are partners – hospitals that deal with access issues for their patients or difficulties in bringing clinical trials into those clinical settings so that patients have access to the cutting-edge in terms of treatment. These are really important for hospitals and services that are partners in those precincts.

So, if we think about the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network, for example – working and engaging with the other partners in the Hub is going to be a way for them to potentially find solutions to, you know, kids that may have rare diseases and have not had as much access to innovations in the past and really accelerate those innovations going forward.

So again, it’s the synergy of different kinds of partners that makes those places really the cauldron of new solutions that may actually tackle issues that were unfortunately affecting some patients more than others and really make sure that we focus on finding solutions for them.

Sonia Nair: Professor Jones points to how the Hub’s educational capabilities will help alleviate the shortage of specialised health professionals and the ensuing gap in public healthcare.

Cheryl Jones: So we have this beautiful state-of-the-art simulation spaces, including a simulation pharmacy, training not only physicians, our unique physiotherapy exercise physiologist, nutrition and dietetics, optometrists, soon-to-be-launching postgraduate nursing.

And what this does is, not only gives state-of-the-art training to those professions, but provides genuine opportunity to role model what the future of health is, which is a team approach. You know, all of those professions have to intersect and some professions have to extend their scope of practice to meet some of our workforce shortages, particularly in regional, rural areas but also in metropolitan areas.

Comfort

Sonia Nair: The design language of biophilia – the belief that humans are calmer and more comfortable in environments that echo nature – was another non-negotiable in the Hub’s design, according to Sacha, particularly as facilities like the Hub are backdrops to some of the most trying times in people’s lives.

Sacha Coles: Biophilia does relate to plants, but it’s really about sensory design, so it’s what you see and feel and hear, shadow play, the movement of plants and wind. All of that contributes to biophilia, and that’s something, again, that multiple studies have shown makes us feel more grounded, eases our mental load that is pretty stressful day to day.

This one is pretty unique because it’s got a large two and a half thousand square meter, north-facing public space, which is almost like its own park that joins the various buildings of the precinct together. So, we’re able to bring in water, mature planting, native plants on the streetscape, and large areas of lawn for people to hang out and be next to nature.

That was critical – to create a place where people not just like the look of, but actually want to be in and spend time.

Sonia Nair: Kiri has firsthand knowledge of how important a sense of external comfort is in times of duress.

Kiri Collins: There is really nothing more powerful than seeing a patient and their family feeling at ease in a space that you’ve created specifically with them in mind. It’s been really incredible and, you know, quite an emotional piece of work as well, working so closely with these families that trust us to be able to create these environments for them and we’ve been able to deliver on that.

Beauty

Sonia Nair: The sheer beauty of the UNSW Health Translation Hub can’t be overstated as a key design outcome – one that motivates everyone who’s lucky enough to work within it.

Dr Levesque says the beauty of the facility engenders a spirit of innovation.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: The Hub is a beautiful place. And when you walk into it, you can see that sense of connection, openness really conveyed by the architecture. I think the beauty of the architecture as soon as you walk in really sets the stage and almost sets the tone for a culture of collaboration, creation and innovation.

Sonia Nair: It’s the magnitude of place that most enamours Kiri.

Kiri Collins: One of the things that really cements it for me and is so rewarding every day is the sheer scale of the glazing in the building, the size of the windows and the ability to be able to see so much of the exterior landscape and broader precinct. You can see the water from two different directions of the building. You can see the cityscapes in another direction. There’s incredible views of Sydney no matter where you are, but there’s also really incredible viewpoints of our local Country and that’s such an important reminder of where we started, who we are, what we’re here to do and who we’re here to serve.

Sonia Nair: The fact that the Hub is a great sum of its parts is what most excites Kristan.

Kristan Elvish: The part of the Hub that I am most proud of is the smaller design elements that you may not see on first glance, but when you take a step back you’re looking at the various orientations and grooves, it all sort of strikes a sense of awe. And the reason that’s such an important thing for me is that it was such a collaborative process that we brought in as Plenary with the consortium, with Hansen Yuncken and Architectus.

Looking ahead

Sonia Nair: So where to next? Dr Levesque says the measurement of precincts’ impacts is an emerging science in and of itself, but he says a few things are certain.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: There’s obviously a lot of things we will see happen over the next five years in terms of research activity, the co-location of industry with research, with clinicians and decisionmakers – all of that we’ll be able to track. There will be obviously new patent, new intellectual property that will be created. But ultimately, we need to pay attention to the ideas that will be breakthroughs and how will they be picked up by the adjacent healthcare system or faculties in the university.

Sonia Nair: Professor Jones sees the UNSW Health Translation Hub as a fundamental piece of the puzzle in solving healthcare’s future problems.

Cheryl Jones: What are the key ingredients we need to not only make these incredible discoveries, but to get them into practice and scale them up?

I mean, things are changing. You know, that’s not news to anyone. So how do we keep at the forefront of some of these key areas? Both in AI and disruptive technologies. Personalised or precision medicine. A deep need to engage with communities and co-design, including our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other peoples, to make sure that when we do research, we are framing the outcomes and co-designing with the people that is going to impact.

You know, we train 50% of the New South Wales health workforce. How do I make sure these people are equipped for the future? They need to able to adapt and respond and be thinking very differently about healthcare from when I did my medical training some years back. There are likely professions that we don’t even know about. And so, how do we get in the forefront and start thinking about that? Particularly with the explosion of genomics and precision health. We need to be able to constantly upskill and adapt and flex.

Sonia Nair: The term ‘special sauce’ rears its head multiple times in my conversations with stakeholders that have helped shape the Hub. It’s a question Professor Terpening is often asked.

Zoe Terpening: What is it that allowed it to be this iconic forward-looking project that we’ve now seen come out of the ground? And I often reflect on just how fortunate we were to have a university, a set of health partners, a number of medical research institutes, our partners with Plenary, Architectus and all of the project partners that came along to fund and support this initiative. And yet throughout that journey we didn’t lost our north star of what we were trying to achieve. And I think that is rare and unique and where projects can really be transformative.

Sonia Nair: This spirit of true partnership is something that sets the Hub apart, according to Sam from Klok Advisory.

Sam Sangster: HTH is a project that is of the ages and for the ages. You know, it was delivered in an incredible manner by a great bunch of people and I think it shows, you know. There is a generosity and a good spirit in the building and you feel it when you walk through the front doors.

Sonia Nair: Sergio foresees the approach UNSW Health Translation Hub has spearheaded being replicated across different industries around the country and globally.  

Sergio Calcarao: I think what we’ll see now is co-location within buildings and in different sectors, not just in health. We can see it in other industries – education, computing, IT, advanced manufacturing facilities. And we are seeing that solution evolve and move into other sectors, not just in Australia, but globally. And it’s quite an exciting development and something that certainly Plenary is looking forward to getting involved with.

Sonia Nair: Dr Levesque, Jillian, Kiri and Professor Jones distil the Hub’s impact into the simplest, most meaningful terms.

Jean-Frédéric Levesque: Not everyone will have a chance to work every day in the Hub, but I’m sure that every day the Hub will have an influence that will go beyond those walls.

Jillian Skinner: The co-location of clinicians, of educators, of researchers, of students, of industry partners – that’s the future.

Kiri Collins: It’s genuinely believed that we have done something that is going to change the course of childhood cancer and it’s going to happen so much faster now than we could ever have imagined.

Cheryl Jones: As we really activate this space, what’s possible becomes limitless.

Sonia Nair: Thanks for tuning into our third Shaping Infrastructure episode. In future episodes, we’ll continue to explore how the collaboration between the public and private sector works in practice, looking at yet more real projects that are delivering tangible outcomes for communities.

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Guests in Episode 3 – UNSW Health Translation Hub: A Nexus of Innovation

Sergio Calcarao is Group Head of Development at Plenary Group. He is responsible for the structuring and successful tendering of global real asset projects for development, investment and management by Plenary.  Sergio is based in Sydney and has over two decades of experience in successful project origination – with active involvement in the development, structuring, negotiation, execution and investment of a number of projects undertaken by Plenary across a variety of sectors, including health, education, life sciences, accommodation, transportation, defence and renewables.

Professor Zoe Terpening is Pro Vice‑Chancellor, Precincts at UNSW Sydney, where she provides strategic leadership for the University’s precinct portfolio, including flagship initiatives across Randwick, Greater Sydney (with a strong focus on Western Sydney), and Canberra City. Her work centres on building high‑performing innovation ecosystems that accelerate translation, enable deep collaboration, and deliver measurable social and health impact through strong partnerships with government, industry, health systems, and communities.

Matthew Todd is is a Principal at Architectus and an award‑winning integrated design leader specialising in complex education, research, health and civic environments. With over 30 years’ experience and dual qualifications as an architect and landscape architect, he has led over $2 billion of major institutional and public projects across Australia and the UK – notably the UNSW Health Translation Hub and the Charles Perkins Centre at The University of Sydney. Matthew’s work is internationally recognised for its architectural quality, technical rigour and enduring public value. He is an active contributor to professional discourse through speaking, teaching and critique.

Kristan Elvish is Executive Director, Growth and Property at Plenary Group. He led Plenary’s partnership with UNSW to develop the UNSW Health Translation Hub. Since Kristan joined Plenary in 2022, he has been passionate about creating an ecosystem that benefits customers and stakeholders alike and working with them to devise solutions for their future built form needs. Kristan also supports property and development opportunities for Plenary, including leading the 200-room Crowne Plaza hotel and separate mixed-use development of the Nyaal Banyul Geelong Convention and Event Centre.

Kiri Collins is the Head of Built Environment and Infrastructure at the Children’s Cancer Institute, where she leads the design, delivery, and operation of world-class research, health and education environments. With over 15 years of experience across laboratory services, infrastructure, and operational leadership, Kiri plays a key role in major initiatives including Program Lead for the Minderoo Children’s Comprehensive Cancer Centre, helping to translate cutting-edge science into real-world impact for children with cancer.

Sacha Coles is a Global Design Director of ASPECT Studios and founder of its Sydney studio. As a global design influencer, Sacha’s record of excellence in leading projects of transformational change spans placemaking, infrastructure, play space, academic, civic institutions, and green infrastructure. Sacha delivers innovative design within a social framework, reinforcing the role that cities can play in creating economic, and creative opportunities. Through his work, Sacha promotes uplifting quality of life, encouraging social equity and elevating the human spirit through design.

Dr Jean-Frédéric Levesque, MD PHD FRCP is the Chief Executive of the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation, and the Deputy Secretary, Clinical Innovation and Research at the NSW Ministry of Health. He is an Adjunct Professor at the International Centre for Future Health Systems at the University of New South Wales. He has a Medical Degree, a Masters in Community Health and a Doctorate in Public Health from the Université de Montréal, Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.

George Rolfe is Head of Property at Plenary Group. He is responsible for all of Plenary’s property development and investment activities in the Asia Pacific region. With over 25 years’ experience in the Australian and UK markets, George has expertise across all stages of the development lifecycle. He joined Plenary in 2021 and has been extensively involved in the successful tendering and delivery of Plenary’s recent property projects in the health, education, transit-oriented and mixed-use development sectors over the past four years.

Professor Cheryl Jones is the Dean of Medicine and Health at UNSW, a world-renowned paediatric infectious diseases physician clinician-scientist, and health and medical educator. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences, she has secured over $35 million in peer-reviewed funding and published more than 170 peer reviewed publications. Her research, particularly on childhood encephalitis, vaccination and mother to child transmission of infections, has significantly influenced global health policy.

Sam Sangster is the Managing Director at Klok Advisory, where he personally leads the development of precinct masterplans, complex transactions procuring large infrastructure and precinct/property development projects, acts in a range of project governance roles, facilitating private sector capital investment in (social infrastructure) projects, develops organisational and bespoke government engagement strategies, and advises on commercial structuring for social infrastructure transactions. He is particularly renowned for his expertise in leading health capital projects, health and education precinct developments and commercial structuring for social infrastructure projects.

Hon. Jillian Skinner AM retired from state politics in 2017 after six years as NSW Minister for Health and 14 years as Shadow Minister. She was also the first stand-alone Minister for Medical Research in NSW. In those roles, Jillian created a more unified health sector by creating a decentralised health system, where local districts with strong Boards were accountable for hospitals and other health services within their regions. Jillian is noted for her commitment to health and medical research, particularly her support for innovative treatments arising from new understanding of disease and best models of care.