CORNERSTONE Photonics Innovation Centre (C-PIC) Future Leaders

Funding for academic-led, commercially focused proposals for innovative silicon photonics solutions across a range of application areas and frontier technologies.

The CORNERSTONE Photonics Innovation Centre (C-PIC) is the UK’s technology hub for silicon photonics. Its mission is to build a pipeline of silicon photonics enabled companies serving multiple industry sectors by 2030, underpinned by its open-source silicon photonics foundry. C-PIC is an Innovation and Knowledge Centre based at the Universities of Southampton and Glasgow and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Innovate UK.

C-PIC has launched the Future Leaders opportunity in partnership with the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub (IQN) and the Quantum Biomedical Sensing Hub (Q-BioMed) to provide the funding and support necessary to empower the next generation of research leaders to forge new collaborations and develop ambitious, industry-informed solutions using silicon photonics. The awards are intended to solve the industry-identified challenge of defining the silicon photonics platforms in the UK needed to enable scalable quantum communications and sensing technologies.

C-PIC Future Leaders brings emerging researchers and technical specialists together to explore industry-driven challenges in scaling quantum communications and quantum sensing. A structured programme and funding opportunity builds the skills, networks and teams needed to shape the next generation of silicon photonics platforms for scalable quantum technologies. The programme provides:

• Training and support for future research leaders.
• Funding for three ECMR-led collaborative projects.
• A flexible silicon photonics prototyping foundry.

Participating teams will collectively define end-user requirements in consultation with quantum technology stakeholders, co-develop design specifications with the C-PIC team, and then concentrate their funded activity on their designated technical specialism.

The programme is targeted at those with:

• An interesting technical challenge they want to solve in quantum communications or sensing.
• A concept on paper that that can be developed into a prototype.
• A promising solution that needs to become industry-compatible and scalable.