Quantum information science and technologies (QIST) are uniquely placed to disrupt and transform sectors across the board. Quantum technologies, by exploiting the distinctive phenomena of quantum physics, can perform functions fundamentally unachievable by technologies based solely upon classical physics. For example, when applied to computing, calculations and operations that would take the best supercomputers hundreds of years to complete could be resolved within seconds using quantum computers; as another example, QIST can also be used in sensing and imaging to obtain enhanced precision in a variety of measurements ranging from gas concentrations to gravitational waves, supporting established industries in sectors like manufacturing, energy and healthcare. Furthermore, the application of quantum technologies will have significant implications within communications and security given their ability to break traditional encryption methods used to protect data within financial transactions or military communications while at the same time offering a range of novel, secure solutions largely compatible with the existing infrastructures. The potential of quantum technologies is well demonstrated through its significant financial and strategic backing globally. Restricted to academic environments up until the start of the last decade, the worldwide investment into quantum initiatives has now reached $33 billion, with significant contributions made across China, the US, and Europe. In the UK, the strategic importance of quantum technologies is clear: with a strategic commitment of £2.5 billion over the next decade, EPSRC has listed Quantum Technologies a mission-inspired research priority and the Department for Science Innovation and Technology have named quantum technologies as one of their seven technology families within the UK's Innovation Strategy. It is clear that, around the world, quantum technologies are flourishing. While the technological potential and national importance of QIST to the UK is undeniable, a key challenge to realising our ambitions in this area is the ability to develop a quantum workforce of capable physicists, engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians with both the requisite expertise in quantum information science and expertise in the technologies that will realise it. In addition, the leaders of the UK's quantum future must possess critical professional skills: they must be excellent communicators, leaders, entrepreneurs, and project managers. To meet this key ambition and its resultant needs, the programme offered by the Quantum Information Science and Technologies Centre for Doctoral Training (QIST CDT) is uniquely positioned to deliver the diversity of skills and experience needed to supply the UK with internationally renowned QIST leaders across policy, innovation, research, entrepreneurship, and science communication. QIST CDT students will receive academic training delivered by world-recognised top educators and researchers; undertake industrially-relevant training modules co-delivered with industry partners; gain hands-on experience within world-leading quantum research laboratories; receive one-to-one entrepreneurial mentorship; undergo intellectual property and science policy training; undertake on-site industry placements; and complete multi-faceted cohort projects designed to develop multidisciplinary teamwork. This combination of world-class academic research training, which can be undertaken in a vast array of quantum-technology-relevant sectors, with bespoke instruction in professional skills driven by the needs of current and future quantum industry, will produce graduates with a drive to make a difference in Quantum Technologies and the skills to make that happen.

Quantum technology will revolutionise many aspects of life and bring enormous benefits to the economy and society. The Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Informatics (QI CDT) will provide advanced training in the structure, behaviour, and interaction of quantum hardware, software, and applications. The training programme spans computer sciences, mathematics, physics, and engineering, and will enable the use of quantum technology in a way that is integrable, interoperable, and impactful, rather than developing the hardware itself. The training programme targets three research challenges with a strong focus on end user impact: (i) quantum service architecture concerns how to design quantum networks and devices most usefully; (ii) scalable quantum software is about feasible application at scale of quantum technology and its integration with other software; and (iii) quantum application analysis investigates how quantum technology can be used most advantageously to solve end user problems. The QI CDT will offer 75+ PhD students an intensive 4-year training and research programme that equips them with the skills needed to tackle the research challenges of quantum informatics. This new generation will be able to integrate quantum hardware with high-performance computing, design effective quantum software, and apply this in a societally meaningful way. The QI CDT brings together a coalition with national reach including over 65 academic experts in quantum informatics from five universities - the University of Edinburgh, the University of Oxford, University College London, Heriot-Watt University, and the University of Strathclyde - and three public sector partners - the National Quantum Computing Centre, the National Physical Laboratory, and the Hartree Centre. A network of over 30 industry partners, diverse in size and domain expertise, and 9 leading international universities, give students the best basis for meaningful and collaborative research. A strong focus on cohort-based training will make QI CDT students into a diverse network of future leaders in Quantum Informatics in the UK.

Quantum technologies exploit the intriguing properties of matter and light that emerge when the randomizing processes of everyday situations are subdued. Particles then behave like waves and, like the photons in a laser beam, can be split and recombined to show interference, providing sensing mechanisms of exquisite sensitivity and clocks of exceptional accuracy. Quantum measurements affect the systems they measure, and guarantee communication security by destroying cryptographic keys as they are used. The entanglement of different atoms, photons or circuits allows massively powerful computation that promises complex optimizations, ultrafast database searches and elusive mathematical solutions. These quantum technologies, which EPSRC has declared one of its four Mission-Inspired priorities, promise in the near future to stand alongside electronics and laser optics as a major technological resource. In this 'second quantum revolution', a burgeoning quantum technology industry is translating academic research and laboratory prototypes into practical devices. Our commercial partners - global corporations, government agencies, SMEs, start-ups, a recruitment agency and VC fund - have identified a consistent need for hundreds of doctoral graduates who combine deep understanding of quantum science with engineering competence, systems insight and a commercial head. With our partners' guidance, we have designed an exciting programme of taught modules to develop knowledge, skills and awareness beyond the provision of traditional science-focused PhD programmes. While pursuing leading-edge research in quantum science and engineering, graduate students in the EPSRC CDT for Quantum Technology Engineering will follow a mix of lectures, practical assignments and team work, peer learning, workshops, and talks by our commercial partners. They will strengthen their scientific and engineering capabilities, develop their computing and practical workshop skills, study systems engineering and nanofabrication, project and risk management and a range of commercial topics, and receive professional coaching in communication and presentation. An industrial placement and extended study visit will give them experience of the commercial environment and global links in their chosen area, and they will have support and opportunities to break their studies to explore the commercialization of research inventions. A QT Enterprise Club will provide fresh, practical entrepreneurship advice, as well as a forum for local businesses to exchange experience and expertise. The CDT will foster an atmosphere of team working and collaboration, with a variety of group exercises and projects and constant encouragement to learn from and about each other. Students will act as mentors to junior colleagues, and be encouraged to take an active interest in each other's research. They will benefit from the diversity of their peers' backgrounds, across not just academic disciplines but also career stages, with industry secondees and part-time students bringing rich experience and complementary expertise. Students will draw upon the wealth of experience, across all corners of quantum technologies and their underpinning science and techniques, provided by Southampton's departments of Physics & Astronomy, Engineering, Electronics & Computer Science, Chemistry and its Optoelectronics Research Centre. They will be given training and opening credit for the Zepler Institute's nanofabrication facilities, and access to the inertial testing facilities of the Institute of Sound & Vibration research and the trials facilities of the National Oceanography Centre. Our aim is that graduates of the CDT will possess not only a doctorate in the exciting field of quantum technology, but a wealth of knowledge, skills and awareness of the scientific, technical and commercial topics they will need in their future careers to propel quantum technologies to commercial success.

Quantum Technologies (QT) are at a pivotal moment with major global efforts underway to translate quantum information science into new products that promise disruptive impact across a wide variety of sectors from communications, imaging, sensing, metrology, simulation, to computation and security. Our world-leading Centre for Doctoral Training in Quantum Engineering will evolve to be a vital component of a thriving quantum UK ecosystem, training not just highly-skilled employees, but the CEOs and CTOs of the future QT companies that will define the field. Due to the excellence of its basic science, and through investment by the national QT programme, the UK has positioned itself at the forefront of global developments. There have been very recent major [billion-dollar] investments world-wide, notably in the US, China and Europe, both from government and leading technology companies. There has also been an explosion in the number of start-up companies in the area, both in the UK and internationally. Thus, competition in this field has increased dramatically. PhD trained experts are being recruited aggressively, by both large and small firms, signalling a rapidly growing need. The supply of globally competitive talent is perhaps the biggest challenge for the UK in maintaining its leading position in QT. The new CDT will address this challenge by providing a vital source of highly-trained scientists, engineers and innovators, thus making it possible to anchor an outstanding QT sector here, and therefore ensure that UK QT delivers long-term economic and societal benefits. Recognizing the nature of the skills need is vital: QT opportunities will be at the doctoral or postdoctoral level, largely in start-ups or small interdisciplinary teams in larger organizations. With our partners we have identified the key skills our graduates need, in addition to core technical skills: interdisciplinary teamwork, leadership in large and small groups, collaborative research, an entrepreneurial mind-set, agility of thought across diverse disciplines, and management of complex projects, including systems engineering. These factors show that a new type of graduate training is needed, far from the standard PhD model. A cohort-based approach is essential. In addition to lectures, there will be seminars, labs, research and peer-to-peer learning. There will be interdisciplinary and grand challenge team projects, co-created and co-delivered with industry partners, developing a variety of important team skills. Innovation, leadership and entrepreneurship activities will be embedded from day one. At all times, our programme will maximize the benefits of a cohort-based approach. In the past two years particularly, the QT landscape has transformed, and our proposed programme, with inputs from our partners, has been designed to reflect this. Our training and research programme has evolved and broadened from our highly successful current CDT to include the challenging interplay of noisy quantum hardware and new quantum software, applied to all three QT priorities: communications; computing & simulation; and sensing, imaging & metrology. Our programme will be founded on Bristol's outstanding activity in quantum information, computation and photonics, together with world-class expertise in science and engineering in areas surrounding this core. In addition, our programme will benefit from close links to Bristol's unique local innovation environment including the visionary Quantum Technology Enterprise Centre, a fellowship programme and Skills Hub run in partnership with Cranfield University's Bettany Centre in the School of Management, as well as internationally recognised incubators/accelerators SetSquared, EngineShed, UnitDX and the recently announced £43m Quantum Technology Innovation Centre. This will all be linked within Bristol's planned £300m Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus, placing the CDT at the centre of a thriving quantum ecosystem.

However, access to silicon prototyping facilities remains a challenge in the UK due to the high cost of both equipment and the cleanroom facilities that are required to house the equipment. Furthermore, there is often a disconnect in communication between industry and academia, resulting in some industrial challenges remaining unsolved, and support, training, and networking opportunities for academics to engage with commercialisation activities isn't widespread. The C-PIC host institutions comprising University of Southampton, University of Glasgow and the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC), together with 105 partners at proposal stage, will overcome these challenges by uniting leading UK entrepreneurs and researchers, together with a network of support to streamline the route to commercialisation, translating a wide range of technologies from research labs into industry, underpinned by the C-PIC silicon photonics prototyping foundry. Applications will cover data centre communications; sensing for healthcare, the environment & defence; quantum technologies; artificial intelligence; LiDAR; and more. We will deliver our vision by fulfilling these objectives: Translate a wide range of silicon photonics technologies from research labs into industry, supporting the creation of new companies & jobs, and subsequently social & economic impact. Interconnect the UK silicon photonics ecosystem, acting as the front door to UK expertise, including by launching an online Knowledge Hub. Fund a broad range of Innovation projects supporting industrial-academic collaborations aimed at solving real world industry problems, with the overarching goal of demonstrating high potential solutions in a variety of application areas. Embed equality, diversity, and inclusion best practice into everything we do. Deliver the world's only open source, fully flexible silicon photonics prototyping foundry based on industry-like technology, facilitating straightforward scale-up to commercial viability. Support entrepreneurs in their journey to commercialisation by facilitating networks with venture capitalists, mentors, training, and recruitment. Represent the interests of the community at large with policy makers and the public, becoming an internationally renowned Centre able to secure overseas investment and international partners. Act as a convening body for the field in the UK, becoming a hub of skills, knowledge, and networking opportunities, with regular events aimed at ensuring possibilities for advancing the field and delivering impact are fully exploited. Increase the number of skilled staff working in impact generating roles in the field of silicon photonics via a range of training events and company growth, whilst routinely seeking additional funding to expand training offerings.