In a world grappling with complex global challenges such as population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation, ensuring security, sustainability, and food safety is paramount. Agricultural practices and food production processes are integral to public health, economic stability, and societal well-being. However, conventional approaches have often operated in isolation, limiting our understanding and hindering scalability. The WHEATWATCHER initiative seeks to break these barriers by uniting soil health monitoring, plant health assessment, and food traceability through a cutting-edge digital soil monitoring system. This system assesses soil nutrition, chemical, and biological factors impacting wheat grains from field growth to flour production, spanning multiple European regions. By actively involving stakeholders, including farmers, mill proprietors, and policymakers, WHEATWATCHER tailors its solution to practical needs. It leverages diverse sensor technologies, advanced machine learning models, and automated mapping techniques to boost efficiency and scalability. A Decision Support System and cloud platform ensure accessible insights. At its core, a machine learning model seamlessly integrates technologies, creating a cohesive solution that bridges the gaps between soil health, plant health, and food traceability. WHEATWATCHER aims to foster harmony between sensing technologies, data processing, and stakeholder engagement, revolutionizing comprehensive monitoring.

The smallest amount of light is known as a photon. Although photons are plentiful, controlling them one-by-one remains challenging. If we could gain more control we could make tremendous advances in many areas including imaging, sensing, computing and communications. In this project, we aim to gain more control over individual photons using a special type of atom known as a Rydberg atom. In a Rydberg atom, one electron is excited to a state where it is on average very far from the nucleus. In this Rydberg state, the atom has greatly exaggerated properties. In particular, it becomes extremely sensitive to nearby Rydberg atoms. Over the last decade in Durham, we have shown how to map this sensitivity between Rydberg atoms into a strong interaction between photons. This idea, known as Rydberg quantum optics, has resulted in the strongest interaction between photons ever demonstrated. The next steps on this Rydberg quantum optics journey is to make this system more useful. A major step change in utility that we are proposing is to combine the remarkable features of Rydberg quantum optics with the power of integrated photonics. We will use a fibre coupled chip-based architecture to project single photons on demand and control the interactions between photons. In addition, we will show how these devices can be interfaced with cold atom based quantum memories. Another important challenge to make Rydberg photonics technologically relevant is to make underlying physics and potential devices work faster. Currently the speed limit is in the range of Mbits per second. In this project, we will explore what happens when we try to extend this into the Gbits per second range. As well as increase data rates, going faster also has another advantage in that we become less sensitive to atomic motion which is currently one of the processes that degrade efficiency. The steps demonstrated in this proposal will facilities significant progress towards the dream of a quantum internet.

The Space@Sea project aims to develop multi-use platforms with the objective to develop safe and cost efficient deck space at sea. Due to the increasing population and scarce usable space on land, there is an increasing need for sustainable food and renewable energy from the ocean. In the future these will be supplied more and more by fish- and seaweed farms and ocean energy(floating) wind turbines. There are also geographical locations where additional housing or logistic hubs are needed. All these developments need a flexible and scalable concept that can support a multitude of activities at sea. Space@Sea consists of a group of companies, research institutes and universities that will develop a modular concept for multi-use platforms. Standardised floaters that can be produced at low cost will form the basis. The approach will reduce the cost through standardisation in a similar way that containers reduced the cost of transport in the past. Each floater can support a different function, such as: housing, renewable energy hub, aquafarming (seaweed, algae and fish farms) and logistics equipment. By combining the applications in different ways, Space@Sea will form islands according to the specifications for the location and function at hand. Three specific islands will be validated and demonstrated as part of Space@Sea: An energy hub in the North Sea, aquaculture in the Mediterranean and a floating logistics hub in the Black Sea. To develop a safe and economically viable floating island, a floater need to be developed that can meet the requirements of the various applications and environmental conditions. At the same time these requirements will be brought together into a standardized design. Technology developments are required for the floater, the shared mooring system, coupling between the floaters and application specific developments. The Space@Sea consortium aims to overcome these challenges for a sustainable and cost efficient development of our oceans.

Materials impact most aspects of our lives, including healthcare, energy production, data storage and pollution control. However, the design of functional materials cannot be approached with the certainty and the engineering rules that would be used in planning and constructing a macroscopic object, such as a car or bridge. This is because of the limited scope for design that exists at the atomic scale: experimentally realizable materials must correspond to local minima on a complex, multidimensional energy surface, whose positions and depths are difficult to predict. This project will change the way that we discover new molecular materials by revolutionizing the exploration process, rather than focussing on rules for intuitive design. This will be achieved through a unique synergistic partnership between three principal investigators, bringing together an international leader in crystal structure modelling and prediction methods, an experimental chemist with a track record for inventing new classes of functional materials, and a pioneer in robotics for laboratory and process automation. The programme integrates state-of-the-art computation, experiment and robotics, building on joint breakthroughs from our team (Nature, 2011; Nature, 2017) that lay the groundwork for a transformation in our materials discovery capabilities. We will build a Computational Engine for evolutionary exploration of chemical space using crystal structure prediction and machine learning of structure-property relationships for the assessment of molecules. In parallel, we will develop an Experimental Engine for autonomous synthesis and properties testing using newly-developed, artificially-intelligent, mobile ‘robot chemists’. The vision of ADAM is to couple these two engines together, creating an autonomous discovery platform that amplifies human creativity by searching the vast, unexplored chemical space for new materials with step change properties.