Viraj Perera has joined University of South Australia's commercialisation arm as CEO after five years leading Platcom Ventures for National Innovation Agency of Malaysia.
UniSA Ventures, the commercialisation and investment management arm of University of South Australia (UniSA) has appointed Viraj Perera (pictured) as its new chief executive.
Perera joins UniSA after five years as the CEO of Platcom Ventures, the commercialisation partnership formed by National Innovation Agency of Malaysia, where he was responsible for setting out the company’s leadership strategy and overarching vision.
Perera’s leadership, which followed a nine-month tenure at the agency as senior vice-president and head of innovation business, was tasked with managing $37.5m in Malaysian state aid that had been earmarked for commercialising academic and industry R&D.
His earlier career highlights include three years as senior consultant at University of Oxford’s tech transfer office, Oxford University Innovation, from 2010 and 2013, prior to which he spent almost two years as a business development manager for University of Warwick’s TTO, Warwick Ventures.
Perera started his R&D career as a research supervisor and laboratory demonstrator at RMIT University in 2000, before moving on three years later to help establish diagnostics instrument supplier Diagnostic Array Systems as co-founder and CEO.
He also spent almost two years as an innovation intermediary at InnovationXchange, an Australian government-run program geared towards knowledge exchange in the country’s research segment.
– Image courtesy of LinkedIn
