81 - Incubating deep tech start ups in Australia; Sally-Ann Williams, Cicada Innovations

Sally-Ann Williams is the CEO of Cicada Innovations. Cicada Innovations is Australia’s pioneering deep tech incubator supporting companies solving the world's most pressing problems through science & engineering.  Cicada Innovations has nurtured hundreds of visionary deep tech innovators to validate, commercialise and scale high impact technologies globally across MedTech, HealthTech, AgTech, FoodTech, Clean Energy, AI, Industry 4.0 and more. Prior to joining Cicada Innovations Sally-Ann spent over 12 years at Google as an Executive Program Manager on the engineering team leading work on R&D collaborations with universities, startup and entrepreneurship engagement and pioneering work on CS & STEM education including building world first collaborations delivering national transformation. She is on the boards of World Vision Australia, Fishburners and Cicada Innovations. She is an advisor to several state and national working groups on tech & innovation and is a mentor and advisor to several industry and university incubators & accelerators including Startmate. In this episode you will learn about Cicada Innovations and their involvement in the deeptech sector.  You will learn more about what exactly is “deep tech” and what it looks like when it’s done well.  You will hear about some of the exciting innovations coming from of Cicada Innovations members, and get an understanding of how Australia compares with the rest of the world when it comes to innovation and deep tech.  Founders and entrepreneurs from any industry will also get loads of helpful information and motivating advice around innovating, commercialising and building a company. A lot of learnings from this episode, so we added a load of new terms to our glossary on the Talking HealthTech website including definitions for: Incubators & Accelerators, Research & Development, STEM, Agtech, Foodtech, Industry 4.0, Intellectual Property (IP), Venture Capital, Molecular Diagnostics and Prototype. Full show notes are available on the Talking HealthTech website here. To see the latest information, news, events and jobs on offer at Cicada Innovations, visit their Talking HealthTech Directory here. Mentioned in this episode:Sign Up to the Free Talking Healthtech NewsletterSign up to the free Talking HealthTech newsletter for weekly digital health news, events, jobs, partner updates and Pete’s take on what matters across the sector: talkinghealthtech.com/newsletter