This proposal seeks funding to create a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems (CEPS). Photonics has moved from a niche industry to being embedded in the majority of deployed systems, ranging from sensing, biophotonics and advanced manufacturing, through communications from the chip-to-chip to transcontinental scale, to display technologies, bringing higher resolution, lower power operation and enabling new ways of human-machine interaction. These advances have set the scene for a major change in commercialisation activity where electronics photonics and wireless converge in a wide range of information, sensing, communications, manufacturing and personal healthcare systems. Currently manufactured systems are realised by combining separately developed photonics, electronic and wireless components. This approach is labour intensive and requires many electrical interconnects as well as optical alignment on the micron scale. Devices are optimised separately and then brought together to meet systems specifications. Such an approach, although it has delivered remarkable results, not least the communications systems upon which the internet depends, limits the benefits that could come from systems-led design and the development of technologies for seamless integration of electronic photonics and wireless systems. To realise such connected systems requires researchers who have not only deep understanding of their specialist area, but also an excellent understanding across the fields of electronic photonics and wireless hardware and software. This proposal seeks to meet this important need, building upon the uniqueness and extent of the UCL and Cambridge research, where research activities are already focussing on higher levels of electronic, photonic and wireless integration; the convergence of wireless and optical communication systems; combined quantum and classical communication systems; the application of THz and optical low-latency connections in data centres; techniques for the low-cost roll-out of optical fibre to replace the copper network; the substitution of many conventional lighting products with photonic light sources and extensive application of photonics in medical diagnostics and personalised medicine. Many of these activities will increasingly rely on more advanced systems integration, and so the proposed CDT includes experts in electronic circuits, wireless systems and software. By drawing these complementary activities together, and building upon initial work towards this goal carried out within our previously funded CDT in Integrated Photonic and Electronic Systems, it is proposed to develop an advanced training programme to equip the next generation of very high calibre doctoral students with the required technical expertise, responsible innovation (RI), commercial and business skills to enable the £90 billion annual turnover UK electronics and photonics industry to create the closely integrated systems of the future. The CEPS CDT will provide a wide range of methods for learning for research students, well beyond that conventionally available, so that they can gain the required skills. In addition to conventional lectures and seminars, for example, there will be bespoke experimental coursework activities, reading clubs, roadmapping activities, responsible innovation (RI) studies, secondments to companies and other research laboratories and business planning courses. Connecting electronic and photonic systems is likely to expand the range of applications into which these technologies are deployed in other key sectors of the economy, such as industrial manufacturing, consumer electronics, data processing, defence, energy, engineering, security and medicine. As a result, a key feature of the CDT will be a developed awareness in its student cohorts of the breadth of opportunity available and the confidence that they can make strong impact thereon.

We will train a cohort of 65 PhD students to tackle the challenge of Data Creativity for the 21st century digital economy. In partnership with over 40 industry and academic partners, our students will establish the technologies and methods to enable producers and consumers to co-create smarter products in smarter ways and so establish trust in the use of personal data. Data is widely recognised by industry as being the 'fuel' that powers the economy. However, the highly personal nature of much data has raised concerns about privacy and ownership that threaten to undermine consumers' trust. Unlocking the economic potential of personal data while tackling societal concerns demands a new approach that balances the ability to innovate new products with building trust and ensuring compliance with a complex regulatory framework. This requires PhD students with a deep appreciation of the capabilities of emerging technology, the ability to innovate new products, but also an understanding of how this can be done in a responsible way. Our approach to this challenge is one of Data Creativity - enabling people to take control of their data and exercise greater agency by becoming creative consumers who actively co-create more trusted products. Driven by the needs of industry, public sector and third sector partners who have so far committed £1.6M of direct and £2.8M of in kind funding, we will explore multiple sectors including Fast Moving Consumer Goods and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Personal Finance; and Smart Mobility and how it can unlock synergies between these. Our partners also represent interests in enabling technologies and the cross cutting concerns of privacy and security. Each student will work with industry, public, third sector or international partners to ensure that their research is grounded in real user needs, maximising its impact while also enhancing their future employability. External partners will be involved in PhD co-design, supervision, training, providing resources, hosting placements, setting industry-led challenge projects and steering. Addressing the challenges of Data Creativity demands a multi-disciplinary approach that combines expertise in technology development and human-centred methods with domain expertise across key sectors of the economy. Our students will be situated within Horizon, a leading centre for Digital Economy research and a vibrant environment that draws together a national research Hub, CDT and a network of over 100 industry, academic and international partners. We currently provide access to a network of >80 potential supervisors, ranging from leading Professors to talented early career researchers. This extends to academic partners at other Universities who will be involved in co-hosting and supervising our students, including the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. We run an integrated four-year training programme that features: a bespoke core covering key topics in Future Products, Enabling Technologies, Innovation and Responsibility; optional advanced specialist modules; internship and international exchanges; industry-led challenge projects; training in research methods and professional skills; modules dedicated to the PhD proposal, planning and write up; and many opportunities for cross-cohort collaboration including our annual industry conference, retreat and summer schools. Our Impact Fund supports students in deepening the impact of their research. Horizon has EDI considerations embedded throughout, from consideration of equal opportunities in recruitment to ensuring that we deliver an inclusive environment which supports diversity of needs and backgrounds in the student experience.

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.

Sensors have for a long time played a vital role in battle awareness for all our armed forces, ranging from advanced imaging technologies, such as radar and sonar to acoustic and the electronic surveillance. Sensors are the "eyes and ears" of the military providing tactical information and assisting in the identification and assessment of threats. Integral in achieving these goals is signal processing. Indeed, through modern signal processing we have seen the basic radar transformed into a highly sophisticated sensing system with waveform agility and adaptive beam patterns, capable of high resolution imaging, and the detection and discrimination of multiple moving targets. Today, the modern defence world aspires to a network of interconnected sensors providing persistent and wide area surveillance of scenes of interest. This requires the collection, dissemination and fusion of data from a range of sensors of widely varying complexity and scale - from satellite imaging to mobile phones. In order to achieve such interconnected sensing, and to avoid the dangers of data overload, it is necessary to re-examine the full signal processing chain from sensor to final decision. The need to reconcile the use of more computationally demanding algorithms and the potential massive increase in data with fundamental resource limitations, both in terms of computation and bandwidth, provides new mathematical and computational challenges. This has led in recent years to the exploration of a number of new techniques, such as, compressed sensing, adaptive sensor management and distributed processing techniques to minimize the amount of data that is acquired or transmitted through the sensor network while maximizing its relevance. While there have been a number of targeted research programs to explore these new ideas, such as the USs "Integrated Sensing and Processing" program and their "Analog to Information" program, this field is still generally in its infancy. This project will study the processing of multi-sensor systems in a coherent programme of work, from efficient sampling, through distributed data processing and fusion, to efficient implementations. Underpinning all this work, we will investigate the significant issues with implementing complex algorithms on small, lighter and lower power computing platforms. Exemplar challenges will be used throughout the project covering all major sensing domains - Radar/radio frequency, Sonar/acoustics, and electro-optics/infrared - to demonstrate the performance of the innovations we develop.

Cyber-attacks such as those recently perpetrated on Solarwinds, Colonial Pipeline and Viasat are scaling at an alarming rate. Resilient cyber security technologies are vital to ensure that society can safely and confidently adopt new digital technologies. As our world becomes increasingly digitally connected for utilities, travel, healthcare, education, and commerce, and with the increasing use of artificial intelligence, cyber-physical infrastructure and the commercialisation of space-based entities, new security vulnerabilities are also emerging. This for novel cyber security solutions and secure technology supply chains presents key opportunities for research, innovation and economic impact. Based at Queen's University Belfast, CSIT is a global research and innovation hub for cyber security, and the UK's Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC) for cyber security research. CSIT is therefore in a strong position to make further and significant contributions, maintaining the UK's international research reputation and enhancing its economic and business competitiveness. Through its unique open innovation model with trusted industry partners, CSIT is pioneering research and innovation to protect citizens and businesses and drive economic impact. CSIT's unique model of innovation incorporates a significant engineering and professional services capability differentiating it from other cyber security academic research centres. As a delivery partner of LORCA, the DCMS funded cyber security accelerator, CSIT supported the growth of 70+ UK cyber security companies through knowledge transfer and product development. CSIT has successfully delivered during IKC Phases 1 and 2, and over the next 5 years we will consolidate and raise our level of impact nationally and internationally, continuing to fulfil our key role linking industry, government and academic expertise to promote economic growth. Under the theme of "Securing Complex Systems", CSIT will research and develop new technologies, acting as a nucleating point to accelerate and promote disruptive business opportunities that arise for the wider benefit of the UK cybersecurity industry. This will enable CSIT to seed new research activity in emerging areas of cyber security including, Semiconductor Chip Security, Secure and Resilient Cyber-Physical Infrastructure, Securing Machine Learning, as well as targeting Space Security as a new sectoral focus, with the aim of attracting new funding to drive collaborative research and innovation in these areas. To raise our level of impact, CSIT will build Hubs of Impact with industry partners in one or more of the research areas identified above, modelled on the proposed 'Cyber-AI Technologies Hub' in which CSIT will partner with eight cyber security technology companies to collaborate on the development of new solutions to shared challenges. We conservatively estimate that the £3M investment for CSIT3 could help to unlock up to £10.7M in economic impact across the UK, facilitated by job creation through research projects, support for economic clusters across the UK, engineering support for start-ups and scale-ups, and through public engagement with potential investors to the UK. CSIT3 targets over the next 5 years include: (a) £12M in public research and innovation funding; (b) £900k in industry membership fees; (c) at least 5 examples of successful translation and IP activity from CSIT research; (d) 10 funded industry-academic collaborative projects; and (e) 1 Hub of Impact. Based on CSIT's track record, we fully expect to deliver additional impact beyond these targets and further strengthen the UK's reputation as a global leader in cyber security research and innovation.