UK Invests in Fellowships for Quantum Technologies

02 October, 2015—The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a United Kingdom government agency that funds research and training in a broad range of engineering and science subjects, announced this week an investment of £12 million to EPSRC fellows investigating quantum technology at British universities. The fellowships will support academics in early and established careers and their teams in their quantum research as part of the £270 million National Quantum Technology Programme to secure British leadership in quantum technology.
 
The recipients include five professors in established stages of their careers: John R. Rarity at the University of Bristol, Peter Smith at University of Southampton, Gerald Buller at Heriot-Watt University, Elham Kashefi at University of Edinburgh and Douglas Paul at University of Glasgow. Awards also went to five early career professors, including Jonathan Matthews at University of Bristol, Earl Campbell at University of Sheffield, Alessandro Fedrizzi at Heriot-Watt University, Jose Verdu Galiana at University of Sussex and Jonathan Pritchard at University of Strathclyde.
 
The investment will support research in quantum technology with a wide variety of potentially practical applications, such as scalable and fault-tolerant quantum computers and networks, optical wavelength converters for telecommunications, single-photon detectors, quantum sensors and entanglement schemes for secure quantum encryption.