In 2026, Australia celebrates a remarkable milestone: 20 years of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), one of Australia’s most successful investments in research and innovation.
As we celebrate #NCRIS20, National Imaging Facility also reflects on 20 years of the people that have enabled the imaging excellence, collaboration and impacts only possible with this nationally coordinated research infrastructure.
National impact
NCRIS is the backbone of Australia’s research capability through sustained investment and a uniquely collaborative national model.
Providers have built world-class infrastructure used to enable discovery, innovation and evidence-based decision-making in many fields. The results are the support for generations of researchers, beneficial scientific breakthroughs, new sovereign capabilities, and significant economic and societal returns.
With an estimated return on investment of 7.5:1,* NCRIS demonstrates the value of long-term, strategic investment in national capability.
NIF is proud to be part of that story.
We have two decades of providing researchers with access to advanced imaging technologies, expertise and national networks. Our work is always directed to helping answer some of Australia’s most pressing scientific and clinical questions.
From the specifics of supporting cancer research and neurological studies to broadly advancing medical technologies and improving healthcare outcomes, advanced imaging is now an essential part of Australia’s research ecosystem.
NIF has contributed to answers to crucial health challenges for Australia:
- NIF helped provide the evidence that led to the approval of Australia’s first early-stage dementia treatment, donanemab; ~500,000 Australians are affected by dementia.
- NIF helped to open access to precise diagnostic scans for all Australians with high-risk and recurrent prostate cancers through the Medical Benefits Schedule.
- NIF’s total body PET work has created a new, safe, more sensitive method to scan pregnant women and other vulnerable patients like children with 10x less radiation exposure.
- For the quarter-of-a-million Australians with epilepsy, finding the right treatment can take up to 15 years, but this largest imaging project in Australia is getting over 4,000 patients better treatment decisions, through NIF scanners.
- World’s largest longitudinal muscle MRI study set to benefit children with cerebral palsy via better treatments, done on NIF instruments.
Powered by the people
While NCRIS is often associated with world-class facilities and technology, its greatest strength has always been its people.
Behind every imaging system, data platform and research facility is a community of highly skilled professionals whose expertise turns infrastructure investment into real-world impact. At NIF, clinicians, radiographers, imaging scientists, physicists, chemists, data specialists, facility managers and support staff help researchers deliver discoveries that improve health and benefit Australians through foundational and clinical work.
They develop new methods, support research users, manage complex data and ensure capabilities continue to evolve with scientific progress.
Research infrastructure is more than the facilities themselves – it is powered by the dedicated experts who operate, improve and expand these capabilities every day.
Collaboration is critical
One of NCRIS’s greatest strengths has always been its commitment to collaboration.
Rather than duplicating expensive infrastructure across institutions, NCRIS brings together universities, medical research institutes, government agencies and industry partners to create shared national capabilities that are greater than the sum of their parts.
NIF exemplifies this approach. Our national network of 14 Nodes and 30 facilties span Australia, connecting researchers with cutting-edge instruments, NIF Scientists and collaborative opportunities regardless of their location.
NIF looks forward to the next 20 years
NCRIS20 is an opportunity to celebrate the past while looking to Australia’s future.
As we approach the next phase of NCRIS, emerging imaging technologies, growing data demands, advances in AI and increasingly complex national challenges will make coordinated, strategic research infrastructure more important than ever.
The success of NCRIS over the past 20 years provides a strong foundation for the future, helping Australia remain globally competitive and responsive to emerging research priorities.
For NIF, advances in imaging, data science and AI will continue to transform how researchers understand health, biology and disease.
As we mark this milestone, NIF reflects on the value of national research infrastructure and celebrates the discoveries enabled, collaborations built, expertise developed and lives improved over the past two decades. Most importantly, we recognise the people who have made it all possible and look forward to continuing our contribution to NCRIS and Australia’s research future.
Check out the NCRIS20 celebration publication here for the best of the best stories about what NCRIS investments have enabled (PDF).
* The 2021 Lateral Economics report outlines a “very high” benefit to cost ratio of investment in NCRIS facilities, “even without its contribution to stimulating additional activity”. The huge ROIs are “a consequence of the vast range of ways that NCRIS activities lower the cost of knowledge creation and make the creation of new knowledge possible alongside the value of that knowledge when created”, they argue.