The Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Timing, a collaboration between 7 universities, NPL, BGS and industry, will bring disruptive new capability to real world applications with high economic and societal impact to the UK. The unique properties of QT sensors will enable radical innovations in Geophysics, Health Care, Timing Applications and Navigation. Our established industry partnerships bring a focus to our research work that enable sensors to be customised to the needs of each application. The total long term economic impact could amount to ~10% of GDP. Gravity sensors can see beneath the surface of the ground to identify buried structures that result in enormous cost to construction projects ranging from rail infrastructure, or sink holes, to brownfield site developments. Similarly they can identify oil resources and magma flows. To be of practical value, gravity sensors must be able to make rapid measurements in challenging environments. Operation from airborne platforms, such as drones, will greatly reduce the cost of deployment and bring inaccessible locations within reach. Mapping brain activity in patients with dementia or schizophrenia, particularly when they are able to move around and perform tasks which stimulate brain function, will help early diagnosis and speed the development of new treatments. Existing brain imaging systems are large and unwieldy; it is particularly difficult to use them with children where a better understanding of epilepsy or brain injury would be of enormous benefit. The systems we will develop will be used initially for patients moving freely in shielded rooms but will eventually be capable of operation in less specialised environments. A new generation of QT based magnetometers, manufactured in the UK, will enable these advances. Precision timing is essential to many systems that we take for granted, including communications and radar. Ultra-precise oscillators, in a field deployable package, will enable radar systems to identify small slow-moving targets such as drones which are currently difficult to detect, bringing greater safety to airports and other sensitive locations. Our world is highly dependent on precise navigation. Although originally developed for defence, our civil infrastructure is critically reliant on GNSS. The ability to fix one's location underground, underwater, inside buildings or when satellite signals are deliberately disrupted can be greatly enhanced using QT sensing. Making Inertial Navigation Systems more robust and using novel techniques such as gravity map matching will alleviate many of these problems. In order to achieve all this, we will drive advanced physics research aimed at small, low power operation and translate it into engineered packages to bring systems of unparalleled capability within the reach of practical applications. Applied research will bring out their ability to deliver huge societal and economic benefit. By continuing to work with a cohort of industry partners, we will help establish a complete ecosystem for QT exploitation, with global reach but firmly rooted in the UK. These goals can only be met by combining the expertise of scientists and engineers across a broad spectrum of capability. The ability to engineer devices that can be deployed in challenging environments requires contributions from physics electronic engineering and materials science. The design of systems that possess the necessary characteristics for specific applications requires understanding from civil and electronic engineering, neuroscience and a wide range of stakeholders in the supply chain. The outputs from a sensor is of little value without the ability to translate raw data into actionable information: data analysis and AI skills are needed here. The research activities of the hub are designed to connect and develop these skills in a coordinated fashion such that the impact on our economy is accelerated.

This proposal brings together specialists in aeroacoustics, aerodynamics and flight vehicle design to address directly this major gap in understanding aimed at enabling the design and development of efficient and quiet future multi-rotor propulsion systems. This proposal describes detailed flow and noise measurements in state-of-the-art facilities to gain a fundamental understanding into the aerodynamics and aeroacoustics of overlapping propeller systems. High fidelity flow and noise data will be used to establish new design principles and semi-analytical predictive models for high-efficiency low-noise multi-rotor configurations. In the final phase of the project the results from the project will be exploited to develop a full-scale low-noise multi-rotor demonstrator.

This CDT will train a cohort of 60 students to have the skills and experience that enables them to become leaders in Distributed Algorithms: capitalising on "Future Computing Systems" to move "Towards a Data-Driven Future". Commodity Data Science is already pervasive. This motivates today's pressing need for highly-trained data scientists. This CDT will empower tomorrow's leaders of data science. The UK (and world) needs data scientists that can best exploit tomorrow's computational resources to harvest the new 'oil': the information present in data. As our graduates' careers progress, many cored architectures will become increasingly commonplace. We anticipate millions more cores in tomorrow's desktops than today's. This core count will challenge the assumption made by current Big Data middleware (e.g., Spark and TensorFlow) that the details of future computing systems can be decoupled from the development of data science tools and techniques. More specifically, it will become imperative that data scientists understand how to design algorithms that can operate effectively in environments where data movement is the key performance bottleneck. To meet this need, we will provide training that ensures we generate highly-employable individuals who have both an understanding of the design of future computer hardware as well as an understanding of how and when to flex the algorithmic solutions to best exploit the computational resources that will exist in the future. From the outset, the students will be embedded in a computing environment that anticipates the hardware resources that will arrive on their desks after they graduate, not the hardware that exists today. The cohort of students provides the critical mass that motivates engagement with internationally-leading supercomputing centres: STFC's Hartree Centre is an integral part of the team; links we have established with IBM Research in the US will provide students with access to state-of-the-art computing hardware. This anticipation of future computing capability will ensure our graduates are highly employable, but also help motivate end-user organisations to engage with the CDT. We have identified such end-user organisations that span two themes: defence and security; manufacturing. Organisations in these themes are driven by performance demands and efficiency requirements respectively. We will align the training we provide with the needs of the cohort, the theme and the individual. Each studentship will have two academic supervisors (one aligned with the "Future Computing Systems" and one aligned with moving "Towards a Data-Driven Future") and at least one supervisor from a project partner. This supervisory team will co-define the scope of each studentship. Once the high quality student has been selected and recruited, we will work with the student to define the training that aligns with their needs and the specific demands of the studentship. Our training provision will include the training needs associated with both the "Future Computing Systems" and "Towards a Data-Driven Future" priority areas. We will use guest lectures from, for example, IBM (as used to train Fast Track civil servants) and UC Berkeley to ensure we maximise our graduates' ability to thrive and to become tomorrow's leaders in Distributed Algorithms.

Selex ES are proposing an antenna concept that employs novel microstrip printed element technology to obtain multi-frequency, GNSS operation from a single, composite output, low profile patch-ring antenna. The fundamental design is a quad-band circular patch antenna with parasitic concentric ring resonator and an innovative coupled line feed structure. This technology uses established printed circuit fabrication techniques and can therefore be easily manufactured, at low cost, to suit a wide range of applications where size and weight is a key parameter, for example, the dismounted soldier or small vehicle deployment. A critical design feature for this concept is performance stability and reliability of the antenna when deployed on the platform itself in a typically harsh military environment. The principle of this antenna element design is modular and scalable making it applicable to a variety of applications, including use within controlled radiation pattern arrays (CRPAs) as used in anti-jam networks.

This proposal seeks funding to create a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems (CEPS). Photonics has moved from a niche industry to being embedded in the majority of deployed systems, ranging from sensing, biophotonics and advanced manufacturing, through communications from the chip-to-chip to transcontinental scale, to display technologies, bringing higher resolution, lower power operation and enabling new ways of human-machine interaction. These advances have set the scene for a major change in commercialisation activity where electronics photonics and wireless converge in a wide range of information, sensing, communications, manufacturing and personal healthcare systems. Currently manufactured systems are realised by combining separately developed photonics, electronic and wireless components. This approach is labour intensive and requires many electrical interconnects as well as optical alignment on the micron scale. Devices are optimised separately and then brought together to meet systems specifications. Such an approach, although it has delivered remarkable results, not least the communications systems upon which the internet depends, limits the benefits that could come from systems-led design and the development of technologies for seamless integration of electronic photonics and wireless systems. To realise such connected systems requires researchers who have not only deep understanding of their specialist area, but also an excellent understanding across the fields of electronic photonics and wireless hardware and software. This proposal seeks to meet this important need, building upon the uniqueness and extent of the UCL and Cambridge research, where research activities are already focussing on higher levels of electronic, photonic and wireless integration; the convergence of wireless and optical communication systems; combined quantum and classical communication systems; the application of THz and optical low-latency connections in data centres; techniques for the low-cost roll-out of optical fibre to replace the copper network; the substitution of many conventional lighting products with photonic light sources and extensive application of photonics in medical diagnostics and personalised medicine. Many of these activities will increasingly rely on more advanced systems integration, and so the proposed CDT includes experts in electronic circuits, wireless systems and software. By drawing these complementary activities together, and building upon initial work towards this goal carried out within our previously funded CDT in Integrated Photonic and Electronic Systems, it is proposed to develop an advanced training programme to equip the next generation of very high calibre doctoral students with the required technical expertise, responsible innovation (RI), commercial and business skills to enable the £90 billion annual turnover UK electronics and photonics industry to create the closely integrated systems of the future. The CEPS CDT will provide a wide range of methods for learning for research students, well beyond that conventionally available, so that they can gain the required skills. In addition to conventional lectures and seminars, for example, there will be bespoke experimental coursework activities, reading clubs, roadmapping activities, responsible innovation (RI) studies, secondments to companies and other research laboratories and business planning courses. Connecting electronic and photonic systems is likely to expand the range of applications into which these technologies are deployed in other key sectors of the economy, such as industrial manufacturing, consumer electronics, data processing, defence, energy, engineering, security and medicine. As a result, a key feature of the CDT will be a developed awareness in its student cohorts of the breadth of opportunity available and the confidence that they can make strong impact thereon.