In a consortium led by Heriot-Watt with St Andrews, Glasgow, Strathclyde, Edinburgh and Dundee, this proposal for an "EPSRC CDT in Industry-Inspired Photonic Imaging, Sensing and Analysis" responds to the priority area in Imaging, Sensing and Analysis. It recognises the foundational role of photonics in many imaging and sensing technologies, while also noting the exciting opportunities to enhance their performance using emerging computational techniques like machine learning. Photonics' role in sensing and imaging is hard to overstate. Smart and autonomous systems are driving growth in lasers for automotive lidar and smartphone gesture recognition; photonic structural-health monitoring protects our road, rail, air and energy infrastructure; and spectroscopy continues to find new applications from identifying forgeries to detecting chemical-warfare agents. UK photonics companies addressing the sensing and imaging market are vital to our economy (see CfS) but their success is threatened by a lack of doctoral-level researchers with a breadth of knowledge and understanding of photonic imaging, sensing and analysis, 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 the high-growth export-led sectors of the economy whose photonics-enabled products and services have far-reaching impacts on society, from consumer technology and mobile computing devices to healthcare and security. Building on the success of our CDT in Applied Photonics, the proposed CDT will be configured with most (40) students pursuing an EngD degree, characterised by a research project originated by a company and hosted on their site. Recognizing that companies' interests span all technology readiness levels, we are introducing a PhD stream where some (15) students will pursue industrially relevant research in university labs, with more flexibility and technical risk than would be possible in an EngD project. Overwhelming industry commitment for over 100 projects represents a nearly 100% industrial oversubscription, with £4.38M cash and £5.56M in-kind support offered by major stakeholders including Fraunhofer UK, NPL, Renishaw, Thales, Gooch and Housego and Leonardo, as well as a number of SMEs. Our request to EPSRC for £4.86M will support 35 students, from a total of 40 EngD and 15 PhD researchers. The remaining students will be funded by industrial (£2.3M) and university (£0.93M) contributions, giving an exceptional 2:3 cash gearing of EPSRC funding, with more students trained and at a lower cost / head to the taxpayer than in our current CDT. For our centre to be reactive to industry's needs a diverse pool of supervisors is required. Across the consortium we have identified 72 core supervisors and a further 58 available for project supervision, whose 1679 papers since 2013 include 154 in Science / Nature / PRL, and whose active RCUK PI funding is £97M. All academics are experienced supervisors, with many current or former CDT supervisors. An 8-month frontloaded residential phase in St Andrews and Edinburgh will ensure the cohort gels strongly, and will equip students with the knowledge and skills they need before beginning their research projects. Business modules (x3) will bring each cohort back to Heriot-Watt for 1-week periods, and weekend skills workshops will be used to regularly reunite the cohort, further consolidating the peer-to-peer network. Core taught courses augmented with specialist options will total 120 credits, and will be supplemented by professional skills and responsible innovation training delivered by our industry partners and external providers. Governance will follow our current model, with a mixed academic-industry Management Committee and an independent International Advisory Board of world-leading experts.

We are an interdisciplinary team of physicists, engineers, and computer scientists seeking to form a Hub in Quantum Enhanced Imaging. Our Hub will link world-leading quantum technologists with global industry leaders to transform imaging in alignment with industry priorities and national/international economic and societal needs. Together we will pioneer imaging and sensing systems with breakthrough functionality by developing a family of quantum-enhanced multidimensional cameras operating across a range of wavelengths, timescales and length-scales. Innovations will include: - imaging with the most minimal, or only infrared, illumination; - imaging even where line of sight is blocked; - imaging at wavelengths unachievable by any conventional camera technology;imaging gravity fields with unprecedented sensitivity; and - imaging the microscopic world using quantum light. Quantum Technologies applied to imaging will create cameras offering functionality that is currently not available, transforming a multitude of applications in defence, security, transport, energy, aerospace and the medical/life sciences. We are the only proposed Hub to address the imaging need, and we have over 30 industry partners firmly committed to the aims of the Hub. These partners range from SMEs such as M-Squared Lasers through to multinationals including Thales, e2V and Selex, and consortia including the CENSIS innovation centre, Fraunhofer UK, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre and government bodies including DSTL and NPL. We will support this industrial engagement and exploitation pipeline through a £4M Partnership Fund, managed by our business-led Opportunities Panel that will support jointly funded projects with industry. An additional £3M investment from the Scottish Funding Council will create innovation space within the Hub where companies can co-locate with the academic teams in refining demonstrator systems advancing their TRL to fully precompetitive prototypes. We will engage with the UK's Science Centre Network creating a quantum technology exhibition targeted to interested adults with appeal to wider family audiences and school groups. The exhibit will create space for dialogue about the impact of quantum technologies on the way we live, work and communicate, giving the public an opportunity to feed back their views to the research team. The key strength of this proposal is the combination of a broad-based, highly experienced university consortium with established industry relationships and the relevance of a programme concept shaped by the challenges facing our industry partners.

Worldwide, seaweed aquaculture has been developing at an unabated exponential pace over the last six decades. China, Japan, and Korea lead the world in terms of quantities produced. Other Asiatic countries, South America and East Africa have an increasingly significant contribution to the sector. On the other hand, Europe and North America have a long tradition of excellent research in phycology, yet hardly any experience in industrial seaweed cultivation. The Blue Growth economy agenda creates a strong driver to introduce seaweed aquaculture in the UK. GlobalSeaweed: - furthers NERC-funded research via novel collaborations with world-leading scientists; - imports know-how on seaweed cultivation and breeding into the UK; - develops training programs to fill a widening UK knowledge gap; - structures the seaweed sector to streamline the transfer of research results to the seaweed industry and policy makers at a global scale; - creates feedback mechanisms for identifying emergent issues in seaweed cultivation. This ambitious project will work towards three strands of deliverables: Knowledge creation, Knowledge Exchange and Training. Each of these strands will have specific impact on key beneficiary groups, each of which are required to empower the development of a strong UK seaweed cultivation industry. A multi-pronged research, training and financial sustainability roadmap is presented to achieve long-term global impact thanks to NERC's pump-priming contribution. The overarching legacy will be the creation of a well-connected global seaweed network which, through close collaboration with the United Nations University, will underpin the creation of a Seaweed International Project Office (post-completion of the IOF award).

Knowledge Exchange Hub Design In Action (KEH DIA) is a national network of organisations (academia and industry,) committed to working in effective collaborations, through the ethos of knowledge exchange to deliver a working model of multi-sector participation that meets the requirements for products, processes and services designed for the demands of tomorrows users. It will build economic capability through design-led innovation to ensure that Scotland can maximise its capacity to operate effectively and meet the imperatives of building new economies for future world markets. The aims of KEH DIA are to: Engage design and mobilise entrepreneurial capacity in five key sectors of food, sport, ICT, rural economies and wellbeing Develop a knowledge exchange model for innovation Develop a collaborative partnership model for Scotland that builds upon existing public support mechanisms Understand opportunities for growth in international markets Develop hard and soft metrics for the creative economy KEH DIA offers a genuine alternative to the existing approach to knowledge exchange, which is project-based and demand-led. It currently occurs in isolation and when the need for it has been identified. The KEH DIA is a unique proactive model of knowledge exchange, harnessing the strategic thinking capabilities of design and designers to work on problem identification through dialogue with multiple stakeholders, in order to envision multiple perspectives / scenarios for emerging issues and single complex problems. The core KE activities undertaken by the strategic partners include 15 'Sandpit' events (which is an extreme model for facilitating innovation) resulting in a minimum of 20 Small Grant Scheme awards to develop prototypes, 10-40 support grants for micro-enterprises to fully engage in the process, an interactive Design Portal, Virtual Incubator and a series of 40 Change Audit Grants. The four Scottish art colleges - Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art, Gray's School of Art, University of Abertay Dundee, University of St Andrews, Creative Scotland, Cultural Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, DC Thomson, and the V&A at Dundee are the key partners, working in conjunction with an additional 30 companies. These companies, range widely from independents to SMEs to multi-nationals and collectively our partners have pledged £1, 470, 563 in-kind support. They are drawn to the project by the KEH DIA's approach to participatory knowledge exchange with many more keen to engage with the truly collaborative approach that the Hub will take. Developing strong networks between academic institutions and various companies to disseminate the research and working practices that arise as a result of the KEH DIA will be key to strengthening the creative economy and to embedding the innovative approach of design throughout these networks. KEH DIA will adopt a wide-ranging dissemination strategy working in partnership with all of its strategic partners to build understanding of design across Scotland for all audiences. It will also use a variety of visual means to articulate design as strategy for innovation; these will be distributed and exhibited across Scotland in a variety of traditional and non-traditional spaces to build momentum, visibility and an appetite to engage with the people and process that are design. Design is the strategy for effective innovation through partnership and provides a model that places design excellence at the heart of its delivery, building an inclusive culture with design values, which will generate a perceptual change in the image of Scotland as a design driven culture. The legacy is to embed in each region in Scotland an innovation strategy, that demonstrates the transformational effect of design to a range of audiences, enabling insights gained to become an established framework for companies to use strategically as a tool for growth.

Creative Informatics is an R&D partnership which will grow Edinburgh's creative industries cluster, by helping it to tap the huge potential of using data to shape, develop and deliver new products and services for public and business customers. Over the past ten years, new data-driven products and services have transformed the way people engage with cultural experiences, conduct transactions, and relate to each other. Our ambition is to enable the sector to succeed in an increasingly competitive market, by addressing key innovation challenges and by developing the R&D capacity and data literacy of companies to ensure they can capitalise on new technology to develop new products and services. The R&D Partnership is hosted by the University of Edinburgh, with Edinburgh Napier University and has two key delivery partners: Creative Edinburgh, a well-connected network of over 3800 members, and CodeBase, the largest technology incubator in the UK and one of the fastest growing in Europe. Creative Informatics will benefit from outstanding infrastructure to support delivery including that provided by the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal which will focus on Data Driven Innovation. We will bring together cultural partners, creative businesses and entrepreneurs with academic expertise in the fields of design, informatics, business, law and cultural heritage, to address four Innovation Challenges: 1. Developing access to and engagement with new audiences and markets 2. Developing new modalities of experience 3. Unlocking value in archives and data sets 4. Revealing new business models for the creative industries These challenges could see Edinburgh's Festivals extending the festival experiences offered both in Edinburgh and overseas. Outputs from projects could lead to new commercial products for home entertainment, new apps, games, new ways to buy products and services by experiencing them first, new ways for advertising agencies to develop campaigns and experiences for clients, and online experiences for remote participation. Museums and Galleries will be able to mine text and images in their archives to create opportunities for new product lines for SMEs and the tools developed along the way can also be licensed and sold. Partnerships across our cluster will include creative teams who understand new transaction technologies (crowd-financing, micro-payments, cryptocurrencies). This will ensure creative entrepreneurs can develop radical new products and services, whilst understanding the opportunities and threats and ensuring that social interests are safeguarded. The development of data-driven solutions for adapting and distributing content will open up new international market opportunities for a range of creative industries sub-sectors including design, advertising, gaming, publishing, film and TV production companies, music/record companies, and fashion. We will support growth of the cluster through six R&D initiatives which have been co-designed with partners to meet their needs. Challenge Projects, Horizon Projects and Creative Informatics Labs (CI Labs) will respond directly to the four innovation challenges. Creative Bridge, a dedicated data-driven business innovation programme; Resident Entrepreneurs; and Connected Innovators will respond to the challenge of developing and retaining talent, entrepreneurs and leaders to fuel the growth of the creative industries cluster in Edinburgh. Edinburgh's creative industries cluster has a vibrant creative and technology culture in a city internationally renowned for both culture and entrepreneurship. Creative Informatics provides the missing 'cog' to allow creative entrepreneurs to connect with world-leading expertise in data science and Edinburgh's tech and start-up culture and fulfil its potential to make the UK an international centre for creative data-driven innovation.