Projects in Warwick and Oxford win out with share of £45 million in Government quantum cash

The government has announced investment of £45 million in the UK’s quantum sector.

£30 million investment will go to developing and delivering world-leading prototype quantum computers, providing scientists and engineers with a controlled environment for experimentation, which winners of the £15 million Quantum Catalyst Fund were announced. Winning projects included accelerating adoption of quantum solutions by the public sector, on projects from optimising power grids through to improving diagnosis of dementia.

Funding recipients from across the region include Oxford Ionics, which is developing Quantum Advantage-Ready Trapped-Ion Exploration Testbed and Warwick-based Cold Quanta UK for its scalable quantum atomic lattice computing testbed.

The National Quantum Computing Cente (NQCC) is the UK’s national centre for quantum computing, dedicated to accelerating the development of quantum computing by addressing the challenges of scaling up the technology. The centre is working with businesses, government, and the research community to deliver quantum computing capabilities for the UK and support the growth of the emerging industry.

The NQCC’s programme represents a £93 million investment and is being delivered jointly by the research councils, EPSRC and STFC, as part of UKRI.

The centre will be headquartered in a purpose-built facility on STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory site at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, which is due for completion in 2024.

The NQCC is part of the National Quantum Technologies Programme (NQTP), which involves the delivery of £1 billion of public and private sector investment over 10 years (2014-2024), to develop and deliver quantum technologies across the areas of sensing, timing, imaging, communications and computing.