Artificial intelligence (AI) is undergoing an era of explosive growth. With increasingly capable AI agents such as chatGPT, AlphaFold, Gato and DALL-E capturing the public imagination, the potential impact of AI on modern society is becoming ever clearer for all to see. APRIL is a project that seeks to bring the benefits of AI to the electronics industry of the UK. Specifically, we aspire developing AI tools for cutting development times for everything from new, fundamental materials for electronic devices to complicated microchip designs and system architectures, leading to faster, cheaper, greener and overall, more power-efficient electronics. Imagine a future where extremely complex and intricate material structures, far more complex than what a human could design alone, are optimised by powerful algorithms (such as an AlphaFold for semiconductor materials). Or consider intelligent machines with domain-specialist knowledge (think of a Gato-like system trained on exactly the right milieu of skills) experimenting day and night with manufacturing techniques to build the perfect electronic components. Or yet what if we had algorithms trained to design circuits by interacting with an engineer in natural language (like a chatGPT with specialist knowledge)? Similar comments could be made about systems that would take care of the most tedious bits of testing and verifying increasingly complex systems such as mobile phone chipsets or aircraft avionics software, or indeed for modelling and simulating electronics (both potentially achievable by using semi-automated AI coders such as Google's "PaLM" model). This is precisely the cocktail of technologies that APRIL seeks to develop. In this future, AI - with its capabilities of finding relevant information, performing simple tasks when instructed to do so and its incredible speed - would operate under the supervision of experienced engineers for assisting them in creating electronics suited to an ever-increasing palette of requirements, from low-power systems to chips manufactured to be recyclable to ultra-secure systems for handling the most sensitive and private data. To achieve this, APRIL brings together a large consortium of universities, industry and government bodies, working together to develop: i) the new technologies of the future, ii) the tools that will make these technologies a reality and very importantly, iii) the people with the necessary skills (for building as well as using such new tools) to ensure that the UK remains a capable and technologically advanced player in the global electronics industry.

"Semiconductors" are synonymous with "Silicon chips". After all Silicon supported computing technologies in the 20th century. But Silicon is reaching fundamental limits and already many of the technologies we take for granted are only possible because of Compound Semiconductors (CS). These include: the internet, smart phones and energy-efficient LED lighting! CSs are also at the heart of most of the new technologies envisaged, including 6G wireless, ultra-high speed optical fibre connectivity, LIDAR for autonomous vehicles, high voltage switching for electric vehicles, the IoT and high-capacity data storage. CSs also offer huge opportunities for energy efficiency and net zero. The CS Hub will contribute to "Engineering Net Zero", through products, such as energy-efficient electronics, and by introducing new environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes; to "Quantum Technologies", by creating practical implementations that can be manufactured at scale; to the "Physical and Mathematical Sciences Powerhouse" and "Frontiers in Engineering and Technology", through e.g. cutting-edge materials science and manufacturing-process innovation. CS materials are grown atom-by-atom on slices of crystalline material, known as substrates, which provide mechanical support for the resulting "wafer" during the next stage of fabrication. CSs are often made on relatively small substrates. Manufacturers have had to combine functions by assembling discrete devices but this is expensive. New approaches to integration in epitaxy and fabrication are required along with wafer-size scale-up for the new applications. Applications such as in quantum technology (QT) are pushing requirements for more accurate and highly reproducible manufacturing-processes. With such improvements CS will underpin the UK quantum industry and enable impact for the existing QT investments. We will create designs that are more tolerant to typical variations that occur during manufacturing; develop manufacturing processes that are more uniform and repeatable; create techniques to characterise performance part-way through manufacturing, create techniques to combine materials (e.g. CS grown atom-by-atom on Silicon) and combine functions on chip. We will study and implement ways to make CS manufacturing more environmentally friendly. We will make it easier to compare the environmental foot-print of different CS research and manufacturing-processes by making available relevant, high quality data in the form of accessible libraries of the resource and energy usage of the feedstocks and processes used in CS manufacturing. We aim to change the mind-set of UK academics. Our vision is that researchers think about the translation of their research from the beginning of the innovation process and about the requirements that next generation product manufacturers will face. As a critical factor in all future manufacturing, we aim to embed the philosophy of resource efficiency of the research itself, resource efficiency of the manufacturing process, as well as of the application it supports. We aim to repatriate and connect CS manufacturing supply chains to re-shore production and facilitate innovation, enabling development of holistic solutions. We will address the current staffing shortages of the CS industry by: providing leadership in improving career structure and enhancing training for Hub research and technical staff; putting in place the very best ED&I practice to create the most positive and inclusive working environment and promulgating this across the industry; inspiring the next generation of the CS workforce as well as spreading the news about the fantastic career opportunities currently available. By working closely with industry partners on all these aspects we will attract and retain staff in this critical UK manufacturing industry.

In a consortium led by Heriot-Watt with St Andrews, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Dundee, Huddersfield and NPL, the "EPSRC CDT in Use-Inspired Photonic Sensing and Metrology" responds to the focus area of "Meeting a User-Need and/or Supporting Civic Priorities" and aligns to EPSRC's Frontiers in Engineering & Technology priority and its aim to produce "tools and technologies that form the foundation of future UK prosperity". Our theme recognises the key role that photonic sensing and metrology has in addressing 21st century challenges in transport (LiDAR), energy (wind-turbine monitoring), manufacturing (precision measurement), medicine (disease sensors), agri-food (spectroscopy), security (chemical sensing) and net-zero (hydrocarbon and H2 metrology). Building on the success of our earlier centres, the addition of NPL and Huddersfield to our team reflects their international leadership in optical metrology and creates a consortium whose REF standing, UKRI income and industrial connectivity makes us uniquely able to deliver this CDT. Photonics contributes £15.2bn annually to the UK economy and employs 80,000 people--equal to automotive production and 3x more than pharmaceutical manufacturing. By 2035, more than 60% of the UK economy will rely on photonics to stay competitive. UK companies addressing the photonic sensing and metrology market are therefore vital to our economy but are threatened by a lack of doctoral-level researchers with a breadth of knowledge and understanding of photonic sensing and metrology, coupled with high-level business, management and communication skills. By ensuring a supply of these individuals, our CDT will consolidate the UK industrial knowledge base, driving this high-growth, export-led sector whose products and services have far-reaching impacts on our society. The proposed CDT will train 55 students. These will comprise at least 40 EngD students, characterised by a research project originated by a company and hosted on their site. A complementary stream of up to 15 PhD students will pursue industrially relevant research in university labs, with more flexibility and technical risk than in an EngD project. In preparing this bid, we invited companies to indicate their support, resulting in £5.5M cash commitments for 102 new students, considerably exceeding our target of 55 students, and highlighting industry's appetite for a CDT in photonic sensing and metrology. Our request to EPSRC for £6.13M will support 35 students, with the remaining students funded by industrial (£2.43M) and university (£1.02M) cash contributions, translating to an exceptional 56% cash leverage of studentship costs. The university partners provide 166 named supervisors, giving the flexibility to identify the most appropriate expertise for industry-led EngD projects. These academics' links to >120 named companies also ensure that the networks exist to co-create university-led PhD projects with industry partners. Our team combines established researchers with considerable supervisory experience (>50 full professors) with many dynamic early-career researchers, including a number of prestigious research fellowship holders. A 9-month frontloaded residential phase in St Andrews and Edinburgh will ensure the cohort gels strongly, equipping students with the knowledge and skills they need before starting their research projects. These core taught courses, augmented with electives from the other universities, will total 120 credits and will be supplemented by accredited MBA courses and training in outreach, IP, communication skills, RRI, EDI, sustainability and trusted-research. Collectively, these training episodes will bring students back to Heriot-Watt a few times each year, consolidating their intra- and inter-cohort networks. Governance will follow our current model, with a mixed academic-industry Management Committee and an International Advisory Committee of world-leading experts.

o achieve this vision, we will address major global research challenges towards the establishment of the "quantum internet" —?globally interlinked quantum networks which connect quantum nodes via quantum channels co-existing with classical telecom networks. These research challenges include: low-noise quantum memories with long storage time; connecting quantum processors at all distance scales; long-haul and high-rate quantum communication links; large-scale entanglement networks with agile routing capabilities compatible with - and embedded in - classical telecommunicatons networks; cost-effective scalability, standardisation, verification and certification. By delivering technologies and techniques to our industrial innovation partners, the IQN Hub will enable UK academia, national laboratories, industry, and end-users to be at the forefront of the quantum networking revolution. The Hub will utilise experience in the use of photonic entanglement for quantum key distribution (QKD) alongside state-of-the art quantum memory research from existing EPSRC Quantum Technology Hubs and other projects to form a formidable consortium tackling the identified challenges. We will research critical component technology, which will underpin the future national supply chain, and we will make steps towards global QKD and the intercontinental distribution of entanglement via satellites. This will utilise the Hub Network's in-orbit demonstrator due to be launched in late 2024, as well as collaboration with upcoming international missions. With the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), we will explore applications towards quantum advantage demonstrations such as secure access to the quantum cloud, achievable only through entanglement networks. Hub partner National Physical Laboratory (NPL) working with our academic partners and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) will ensure that our efforts are compatible with emerging quantum regulatory standards and post-quantum cybersecurity to bolster national security. We will foster synergies with competing international efforts through healthy exchange with our global partners. The Hub's strong industrial partner base will facilitate knowledge exchange and new venture creation. Achieving the IQN Hub's vision will provide a secure distributed and entanglement-enabled quantum communication infrastructure for UK end-users. Industry, government stakeholders and the public will be able to secure data in transit, in storage and in computation, exploiting unique quantum resources and functionalities. We will use a hybrid approach with existing classical cyber-security standards, including novel emerging post-quantum algorithms as well as hardware security modules. We will showcase our ambition with target use-cases that have emerged as barriers for industry, after years of investigation within the current EPSRC QT Hubs as well as other international efforts. These barriers include security and integrity of: (1) device authentication, identification, attestation, verification; (2) distributed and cloud computing; (3) detection, measurement, sensing, synchronisation. We will demonstrate novel applications as well as identify novel figures of merit (such as resilience, accuracy, sustainability, communication complexity, cost, integrity, etc.) beyond security enhancement alone to ensure the national quantum entanglement network can be fully exploited by our stakeholders and our technology can be rapidly translated into a commercial setting.

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.