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National Institute of Informatics (NII)

National Institute of Informatics (NII)

10 Projects, page 1 of 2
  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/L016524/1
    Funder Contribution: 4,208,660 GBP

    Recently, an influential American business magazine, Forbes, chose Quantum Engineering as one of its top 10 majors (degree programmes) for 2022. According to Forbes magazine (September 2012): "a need is going to arise for specialists capable of taking advantage of quantum mechanical effects in electronics and other products." We propose to renew the CDT in Controlled Quantum Dynamics (CQD) to continue its success in training students to develop quantum technologies in a collaborative manner between experiment and theory and across disciplines. With the ever growing demand for compactness, controllability and accuracy, the size of opto-electronic devices in particular, and electronic devices in general, is approaching the realm where only fully quantum mechanical theory can explain the fluctuations in (and limitations of) these devices. Pushing the frontiers of the 'very small' and 'very fast' looks set to bring about a revolution in our understanding of many fundamental processes in e.g. physics, chemistry and even biology with widespread applications. Although the fundamental basis of quantum theory remains intact, more recent theoretical and experimental developments have led researchers to use the laws of quantum mechanics in new and exciting ways - allowing the manipulation of matter on the atomic scale for hitherto undreamt of applications. This field not only holds the promise of addressing the issue of quantum fluctuations but of turning the quantum behaviour of nano- structures to our advantage. Indeed, the continued development of high-technology is crucial and we are convinced that our proposed CDT can play an important role. When a new field emerges a key challenge in meeting the current and future demands of industry is appropriate training, which is what we propose to achieve in this CDT. The UK plays a leading role in the theory and experimental development of CQD and Imperial College is a centre of excellence within this context. The team involved in the proposed CDT covers a wide range of key activities from theory to experiment. Collectively we have an outstanding track record in research, training of postgraduate students and teaching. The aim of the proposed CDT is to provide a coherent training environment bringing together PhD students from a wide variety of backgrounds and giving them an appreciation of experiment and theory of related fields under the umbrella of CQD. Students graduating from our programme will subsequently find themselves in high-demand both by industry and academia. The proposed CDT addresses the EPSRC strategic area 'Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Optics" and one of the priority areas of the CDT call, "Towards Quantum Technologies". The excellence of our doctoral training has been recognised by the award of a highly competitive EU Innovative Doctoral Programme (IDP) in Frontiers of Quantum Technology, which will start in October 2013 running for four years with the budget around 3.8 million euros. The new CDT will closely work with the IDP to maximise synergy. It is clear that other high-profile activities within the general area of CQD are being undertaken in a range of other UK universities and within Imperial College. A key aim of our DTC is inclusivity. We operate a model whereby academics from outside of Imperial College can act as co-supervisors for PhD students on collaborative projects whereby the student spends part of the PhD at the partner institution whilst remaining closely tied to Imperial College and the student cohort. Many of the CDT activities including lectures and summer schools will be open to other PhD students within the UK. Outreach and transferable skills courses will be emphasised to provide a set of outreach classes and to organise various outreach activities including the CDT in CQD Quantum Show to the general public and CDT Festivals and to participate in Imperial's Science Festivals.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/V026747/1
    Funder Contribution: 3,063,680 GBP

    Imagine a future where autonomous systems are widely available to improve our lives. In this future, autonomous robots unobtrusively maintain the infrastructure of our cities, and support people in living fulfilled independent lives. In this future, autonomous software reliably diagnoses disease at early stages, and dependably manages our road traffic to maximise flow and minimise environmental impact. Before this vision becomes reality, several major limitations of current autonomous systems need to be addressed. Key among these limitations is their reduced resilience: today's autonomous systems cannot avoid, withstand, recover from, adapt, and evolve to handle the uncertainty, change, faults, failure, adversity, and other disruptions present in such applications. Recent and forthcoming technological advances will provide autonomous systems with many of the sensors, actuators and other functional building blocks required to achieve the desired resilience levels, but this is not enough. To be resilient and trustworthy in these important applications, future autonomous systems will also need to use these building blocks effectively, so that they achieve complex technical requirements without violating our social, legal, ethical, empathy and cultural (SLEEC) rules and norms. Additionally, they will need to provide us with compelling evidence that the decisions and actions supporting their resilience satisfy both technical and SLEEC-compliance goals. To address these challenging needs, our project will develop a comprehensive toolbox of mathematically based notations and models, SLEEC-compliant resilience-enhancing methods, and systematic approaches for developing, deploying, optimising, and assuring highly resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. To this end, we will capture the multidisciplinary nature of the social and technical aspects of the environment in which autonomous systems operate - and of the systems themselves - via mathematical models. For that, we have a team of Computer Scientists, Engineers, Psychologists, Philosophers, Lawyers, and Mathematicians, with an extensive track record of delivering research in all areas of the project. Working with such a mathematical model, autonomous systems will determine which resilience- enhancing actions are feasible, meet technical requirements, and are compliant with the relevant SLEEC rules and norms. Like humans, our autonomous systems will be able to reduce uncertainty, and to predict, detect and respond to change, faults, failures and adversity, proactively and efficiently. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will share knowledge and services with humans and other autonomous agents. Like humans, if needed, our autonomous systems will cooperate with one another and with humans, and will proactively seek assistance from experts. Our work will deliver a step change in developing resilient autonomous systems and systems of systems. Developers will have notations and guidance to specify the socio-technical norms and rules applicable to the operational context of their autonomous systems, and techniques to design resilient autonomous systems that are trustworthy and compliant with these norms and rules. Additionally, developers will have guidance to build autonomous systems that can tolerate disruption, making the system usable in a larger set of circumstances. Finally, they will have techniques to develop resilient autonomous systems that can share information and services with peer systems and humans, and methods for providing evidence of the resilience of their systems. In such a context, autonomous systems and systems of systems will be highly resilient and trustworthy.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/L024020/1
    Funder Contribution: 5,062,360 GBP

    The description of the laws of quantum mechanics saw a transformation in society's understanding of the physical world-for the first time we understood the rules that govern the counterintuitive domain of the very small. Rather than being just passive observers now scientists are using these laws to their advantage and quantum phenomena are providing us with methods of improved measurement and communication; furthermore they promise a revolution in the way materials are simulated and computations are performed. Over the last decade significant progress has been made in the application of quantum phenomena to meeting these challenges. This "Engineering Photonic Quantum Technologies" Programme Grant goes significantly beyond previous achievements in the quantum technology field. Through a series of carefully orchestrated work packages that develop the underlying materials, systems engineering, and theory we will develop the knowledge and skills that enable us to create application demonstrators with significant academic and societal benefit. For the first time in quantum technologies we are combining materials and device development and experimental work with the important theoretical considerations of architectures and fault tolerant approaches. Our team of investigators and partners have the requisite expertise in materials, individual components, their integration, and the underpinning theory that dictates the optimal path to achieving the programme goals in the presence of real-world constraints. Through this programme we will adopt the materials systems most capable of providing application specific solutions in each of four technology demonstrations focused on quantum communications, quantum enhanced sensing, the construction of a multiplexed single-photon source and information processing systems that outperform modern classical analogues. To achieve this, our underlying technology packages will demonstrate very low optical-loss waveguides which will be used to create the necessary 'toolbox' of photonic components such as splitters, delays, filters and switches. We will integrate these devices with superconducting and semiconducting single-photon detector systems and heralded single-photon sources to create an integrated source+circuit+detector capability that becomes the basis for our technology demonstrations. We address the challenge of integrating these optical elements (in the necessary low-temperature environment) with the very low latency classical electronic control systems that are required of detection-and-feedforward schemes such as multiplexed photon-sources and cluster-state generation and computation. At all times a thorough analysis of the performance of all these elements informs our work on error modelling and fault tolerant designs; these then inform all aspects of the technology demonstrators from inception, through decisions on the optimal materials choices for a system, to the layout of a circuit on a wafer. With these capabilities we will usher in a disruptive transformation in ICT. We will demonstrate mutli-node quantum key distribution (QKD) networks, high-bit rate QKD systems with repeaters capable of spanning unlimited distances. Our quantum enhanced sensing will surpass the classical shot noise limit and see the demonstration of portable quantum-enhanced spectroscopy system. And our quantum information processors will operate with 10-qubits in a fault tolerant scheme which will provide the roadmap to 1,000 qubit cluster state computing architectures.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: NE/M00600X/1
    Funder Contribution: 39,751 GBP

    Rapid decline in Arctic sea ice has been observed, and climate models predict even more dramatic changes in the near future. One of the key components that cause such rapid sea ice reduction is sea-ice floe (pieces) breakup in the margin of the ice area during spring and summer. At the edge of sea-ice area, sea-ice floes are exposed to waves and winds and break into smaller pieces. As they become smaller, they become easier to melt from the side and exposing more open water areas. More exposed open water areas then leads to warmer ocean as more sunlight absorb into the ocean, which in turn make sea ice more fragile and breakable. This process can accelerate sea ice retreat in summer and thus impact the minimum ice extent. To understand the effects of such process on summer sea ice retreat, reliable information on sea-ice floe size distribution (FSD) is necessary. Such observations can be made from satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that can observe sea ice through cloud and darkness. There is an increasing number of satellite SAR images being acquired in the Arctic, and often at spatial resolutions in the images as good as 1-20 m. More importantly satellite SAR images are being acquired over autonomous buoy systems and in conjunction with field campaigns. This provides the ideal framework to measure the full range of ocean, sea-ice and atmosphere parameters to investigate complex floe breakup process. However the challenge we have is a lack of proven-quality algorithms that can derive FSD from satellite SAR images fast and accurately. Thresholding algorithms previously applied to the problem are not adequate for quantitative analysis and the performance has not been precisely assessed. Recently NERC TPoC funded us to conduct research to develop cutting-edge algorithm for the retrieval of sea-ice FSD from SAR images. In this IOP proposal we expand our current project internationally in order to add values to the current NERC TPoC project as well as have impacts on wide research communities and commercial companies.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/L015730/1
    Funder Contribution: 4,962,210 GBP

    We aim to grow the world's leading centre for training in quantum engineering for the emerging quantum technology (QT) industry. We have designed this CDT in collaboration with a large number of academic and industry experts, and included as partners those who will add substantially to the training and cohort experience. Through this process a consistent picture of what industry wants in future quantum engineers emerged: people who can tackle the hardest intellectual challenges, recognising the end goal of their research, with an ability to move from fundamental physics towards the challenges of engineering and miniaturising practical systems, who understands the capabilities of other people (and why they are useful). Industry wants people with good decision-making, communication and management skills, with the ability to work across discipline boundaries (to a deadline and a budget!) and build interdisciplinary teams, with the ability to translate a problem from one domain to another. Relevant work experience, knowledge of entrepreneurship, industrial R&D operations and business practices are essential. By forming a hub of unrivalled international excellence in quantum information and photonics, surrounded by world-class expertise in all areas of underpinning science and technology and the scientific and technological application areas of QT, and a breadth of academic and industry partners, we will deliver a new type of training: quantum engineering. Bristol has exceptional international activity in the areas that surround the hub: from microelectronics and high performance computing to system engineering and quantum chemistry. The programme will be delivered in an innovative way-focussing particularly on cohort learning-and assessed by a variety of different means, some already in existence in Bristol. We believe that we are attempting something new and exciting that has the potential to attract and train the best students to ensure that the resulting capacity is world-class, thus providing real benefits to the UK economy.

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