This week, the UNE based Poultry Cooperative Research Centre, which is Australia’s leading researcher into sustainable poultry production secured an additional $28 million to conduct new research over a further seven and a half years.

Vice Chancellor and CEO, Professor Alan Pettigrew said the cash injection would have significant flow on benefits for the University of New England, and is great news for the University and its academic community.

“The CRC attracts world-class researchers and academics,” Professor Pettigrew said, adding “the CRC already supported 35 students nationally for their Honours, Masters and PhD degrees, and developed undergraduate courses dedicated to poultry science.”

In related news, Professor Pettigrew congratulated UNE’s Associate Professor David Lamb who leads an important component of the CRC for Spatial Information, based at the CSIRO, which received a total of $32.2 million.

These two research funding announcements have come the same time as UNE has been ranked among the country’s top ‘sandstone’ universities in terms of dollars earned from research commercialisation.

Chancellor of UNE, Dr Richard Torbay MP described the ranking as a significant achievement for the University of New England, and a real indication of UNE’s research strengths.

“In key output areas, such as research, and learning and teaching, UNE performs equally as well - if not better - than many of the country’s oldest sandstone universities. While in one sense, we are a smaller, regional university, in another sense UNE is something much, much bigger, with world-class researchers and first-class research.”

“UNE is certainly capable of punching well above its weight,” he said.

Earlier this week, Chancellor Torbay commended the UNE on the unrivalled consistency of its five-star rating for “graduate satisfaction” in the 2010 Good Universities Guide.

The 2010 Guide has awarded UNE its top rating (five stars) for “graduate satisfaction”. UNE has achieved this rating for 10 out of the past 11 years - an achievement matched by no other Australian university.

In closing, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Pettigrew, highlighted that these recent research and teaching announcements demonstrate that UNE is making both regional and global impact.

“UNE is a serious player in the higher education sector, we are a dynamic, with first-class research expertise, and world-class learning and teaching,” he said.