Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs) are the number 1 cause of death globally: more people die annually from CVDs than from any other cause. Despite emerging diagnostics tools and therapeutics, several areas of significant unmet need remain unaddressed among CVD patients. The ability to personalize cardiovascular medical care and improve outcomes, will require characterization of disease processes at a molecular level. The current state-of-the-art, e.g., Positron emission tomography (PET), does not provide detailed information about the chemical state of the tissue at a molecular level, therefore it remains difficult to accurately diagnose and confidently select appropriate therapy in many circumstances. The MetaboliQs project brings together two areas of European excellence - diamond-based quantum sensing and medical imaging. We will translate a newly developed hyperpolarization method for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) based on the quantum dynamics of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. This breakthrough quantum technology will enable previously unachievable, highly sensitive quantification of metabolic activity, paving the way for precision diagnostics and better personalized treatment of cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases. For realizing and eventually commercializing the technology, MetaboliQs brings together a world-class multidisciplinary consortium with end to end expertise - leading diamond quantum technology research institutes (Fraunhofer IAF - quantum-grade diamond growth and fabrication, HUJI - quantum sensing) and innovative companies (Element 6 - worldwide leader in synthetic diamonds, NVision - inventor of diamond-based polarization), as well as two expert users of hyperpolarized and cardiovascular MRI (TUM, ETH Zurich - first in continental Europe to conduct clinical trials of hyperpolarized MRI for cardiovascular disease) and the market leader in electron paramagnetic resonance and preclinical MRI (Bruker).

ASTERIQS will exploit quantum sensing based on the NV centre in ultrapure diamond to bring solutions to societal and economical needs for which no solution exists yet. Its objectives are to develop: 1) Advanced applications based on magnetic field measurement: fully integrated scanning diamond magnetometer instrument for nanometer scale measurements, high dynamics range magnetic field sensor to control advanced batteries used in electrical car industry, lab-on-Chip Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) detector for early diagnosis of disease, magnetic field imaging camera for biology or robotics, instantaneous spectrum analyser for wireless communications management; 2) New sensing applications to sense temperature within a cell, to monitor new states of matter under high pressure, to sense electric field with ultimate sensitivity; 3) New measurement tools to elucidate the chemical structure of single molecules by NMR for pharmaceutical industry or the structure of spintronics devices at the nanoscale for new generation spin-based electronic devices. ASTERIQS will develop enabling tools to achieve these goals: highest grade diamond material with ultralow impurity level, advanced protocols to overcome residual noise in sensing schemes, optimized engineering for miniaturized and efficient devices. ASTERIQS will disseminate its results towards academia and industry and educate next generation physicists and engineers. It will contribute to the strategic objectives of the Quantum Flagship to expand European leadership in quantum technologies, deliver scientific breakthroughs, make available European technological platforms and develop synergetic collaborations with them, and finally kick-start a competitive European quantum industry. The ASTERIQS consortium federates world leading European academic and industrial partners to bring quantum sensing from the laboratory to applications for the benefit of European citizens.

The future Quantum Internet will provide radically new internet applications by enabling quantum communication between any two points on Earth. The Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) targets a Blueprint for a pan-European Quantum Internet by ground-breaking technological advances, culminating in the first experimental demonstration of a fully integrated network stack running on a multi-node quantum network. QIA will push the frontier of technology in both end nodes (trapped ion qubits, diamond NV qubits, neutral atom qubits) and quantum repeaters (rare-earth-based memories, atomic gases, quantum dots) and demonstrate the first integration of both subsystems. We will achieve entanglement and teleportation across three and four remote quantum network nodes, thereby making the leap from simple point-to-point connections to the first multi-node networks. We will demonstrate the key enabling capabilities for memory-based quantum repeaters, resulting in proof-of-principle demonstrations of elementary long-distance repeater links in the real-world, including the longest such link worldwide. Hand in hand with hardware development, we will realize a software stack that will provide fast, reactive control and allow arbitrary high-level applications to be realized in platform-independent software. QIA's industry partners examine real world use cases of application protocols and their hardware requirements. We will validate the full stack on a small Quantum Internet by performing an elementary secure delegated quantum computation in the cloud. We will validate the design of the Blueprint architecture by a large-scale simulation of a pan-European Quantum Internet using real world fibre data. Through synergy of leading industrial, academic and RTO partners, QIA's Blueprint will provide a targeted roadmap for the main Flagship phase and set the stage for a world-leading European Quantum Internet industry.

Many of the challenges faced by small and medium sized EU shipyards can be addressed by improving their productivity for fabricating new, high technology vessels and increasing their access to the specialist repair and maintenance market. Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is a high integrity, low distortion, environmentally benign, welding technique, which was previously investigated in FP7 project HILDA (High Integrity Low Distortion Assembly) and recommended for shipbuilding due to its high quality and suitability for automation. A recent break-through in the tooling material available for FSW now shows potential to enable this process for welding of steel structures (traditionally it has only been possible to use FSW in aluminium) – this represents a huge opportunity to improve the productivity of European shipyards. In RESURGAM, will combine FSW with the new tool material to deliver: • The introduction of low cost friction stir welding (FSW) systems for steel that can be retrofitted to their existing CNC machines; • The introduction of AI enabled, robotic FSW systems capable of making underwater weld repairs. These fabrication and repair capabilities, backed by the secure, digital Industry 4.0 infrastructure and techniques already in widespread use in the automotive and aerospace industries, will facilitate the rapid, coordinated but distributed modular manufacture of ships and watercraft throughout Europe. Practically, this will allow ships damaged anywhere in the world will have the option of being repaired in place without the need to travel to the nearest dry dock. This will allow ship owners to choose the most suitable yards to conduct their repairs rather than the nearest, and the repairs may be undertaken by yards with no dry dock of their own thus significantly increasing the number of yards able to undertake such work. All of this will implemented by the European shipyards and Naval architects in Europe.