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.

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.

As cultural artefacts, video games are complex, multi-faceted products that encompass creative practices from character and narrative, interaction and gameplay design, architecture, product and environment design to sound design and composition. Technically they bring together software engineering with maths and physics, AI with networks and user data. Bring these together with a dynamic and competitive commercial environment and a disrupted technology environment and a growing cultural significance and you can begin to appreciate the challenges faced by this industry. SMEs operating in the video games sector are subject to technological, market and platform disruption where platform access and 'discoverability' are significant challenges to product viability. These factors are exerting a downward pressure on innovation and the creation of original IP in the Dundee cluster. The InGame partnership will pursue a highly collaborative, embedded approach to R&D by establishing a dedicated a R&D centre at the heart of the cluster. Artists, designers and creative writers will be co-located with technologists and business specialists to offer a dynamic and responsive resource to engage with three significant high-level challenges - consolidated from issues raised through local consultation, a survey of over 700 UK games studios and the trade body's blueprint for growth - where combined collaborative R&D could lead to significant growth, sustainability and intensification for the computer games cluster in Dundee. Creative Risk: Over the last decade the dominant business model in the Dundee games cluster has shifted from a publishing model where development costs are borne by the publisher in advance of sales income; to a platform model where individual games companies carry the cost of development in return for as larger proportion of the sales revenue. As a consequence the risk attendant with the development of original IP for the games market is, more often than not, fatal for start-up and micro-SME studios. Technological Innovation: Working practices in this cluster are characteristically solution focused and iterative, and often inventive and ingenious. However, technology innovations are not systematically captured or tested for generalization or re-use value. Commercial pressure on value chains has inhibited SMEs from taking on the risk of high-value innovation activity resulting in lost economic opportunity and inhibited cluster growth. Organisational Development: The cluster is characterized by a high number of dynamic micro-SMEs creating content for mobile, tablet and PC gaming platforms. The city is also home to a smaller number of mid-sized SME's with established product portfolios ranging from original franchises, sub-contracted development for established franchises and studios developing games for console. There is a growing professional services sector (accountancy, legal) and cultural scene (galleries and events). R&D in organisational development in this context relates to start-up at company level through to cluster and ecosystem development. The education sector is foundational to the cluster; Abertay University's Center for Excellence in Computer Games Education is characterised by active and mature collaboration between businesses, universities, and agencies of every scale. The University's longstanding relationship with national and multi-national games companies offers a unique opportunity to catalyse the value chain in the Dundee cluster. The academic partnership with Dundee University in Design for Business, and St Andrews School of Management's expertise in Creative Industries offers a world-leading research base for the R&D partnership. The InGAME R&D Center and cohort of Creative R&D Fellows will establish a new mode of engagement for industry and universities to work effectively and responsively to meet the challenge of cross-sector collaborative R&D in the Creative Industries.

This application aims to catalyse and sustain a new dimension in UK research capability in physical organic chemistry. Our strategic alliance in physical organic chemistry will provide a unique continuum of expertise to tackle research opportunities in areas as diverse as materials chemistry, synthesis methodologies and pharmaceutical discovery and development. It will have the capability to address issues from solid-state to solution and gas-phase, from small molecules to biopolymers, and from nanoscale to pilot plant. We focus on topics of international significance to industry worldwide as well as to academic chemistry, that will help to (i) drive the creation of 21st-century electronic materials, devices and technologies (ii) understand and exploit methodologies for assisting chemical reactions with the potential to revolutionise energy use in chemicals and pharmaceuticals industries (iii) provide new and more effective medicines through understanding molecular recognition in pharmaceutical systems including drug-receptor, drug-drug and drug-carrier complexes. Its importance is underlined by the initial substantial support from diverse sectors of the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry that we have so far put in place. It will initially lead to 26 new appointments, and we look forward to even more dynamic growth as the program unfolds.

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).