About the Taringa Research and Innovation Platform (TRIP) programme
The vision of the Taringa Research and Innovation Platform (TRIP) programme is to contribute to improving hearing health outcomes of people by developing new options for inner-ear diagnosis and treatment that are not currently available.
Our goal: To create a new, drug-based pathway for sensorineural hearing loss by solving one of the biggest bottlenecks in the field: getting therapies to where they need to act — inside the inner ear (cochlea).
Our mission: We translate cutting-edge ear physiology and auditory neuroscience into real-world solutions by:
- Developing a device that can deliver therapeutic compounds directly to the cochlea, enabling treatments that current care options can’t provide.
- Bridging gaps in diagnosis and targeting, acknowledging that sensorineural hearing loss varies widely and that current diagnostics don’t reveal underlying biological causes well enough for targeted treatment.
- Building a pathway to impact at scale through translation, commercialisation and working with community partners.
- New ways to deliver drugs to the inner ear, and
- New diagnostic technologies to help diagnose what is happening in the ear space to evaluate treatments.
We are committed to Aotearoa New Zealand partnerships and ways of working, including fully implementing our commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi), and embedding a Kaupapa Māori approach across our operations and research. Our core values are collaboration and open, transparent culture.
TRIP is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) through the Endeavour Fund, with funding administered through the University of Auckland, which supports the programme. We are also supported by Te Titoki Mataora through their clinical translation modules and the Research Acceleration Programs. Our commercialisation effort is supported by UniServices and the University of Auckland.