Quantum Sensors, Quantum Technology

Manchester to lead £12.6M push for quantum sensors and secure comms

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September 9, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

Manchester researchers will lead a new £12.6 million UK research program focused on advancing photonics and quantum technologies. The five-year Materials Engineering for Advanced Devices (MEAD) program will utilize techniques like deterministic single-atom doping and isotopic engineering to create materials with new functionalities for secure communications, quantum sensors, and scalable computing.

“MEAD will build on the internationally recognised strengths in advanced materials, device engineering and quantum technologies in Manchester, Leeds and Imperial,” said Professor Richard Curry, Principal Investigator of MEAD and Associate Vice-President of Research and Innovation at The University of Manchester. The program aims to translate atomic-scale research into deployable devices, addressing a key challenge in modern technology.

Atomic-Scale Engineering for Quantum Devices and Computing

Researchers will precisely introduce individual atoms into material structures, controlling properties and moving beyond simply discovering new materials to actively designing them. This level of control is intended to overcome a major hurdle in translating atomic-scale discoveries into scalable technologies for secure communications, sensing, and computing. The program’s scope extends beyond theoretical material science; it directly targets device development, including highly sensitive masers, the microwave counterparts to lasers, demonstrating a commitment to practical application.

Isotopic engineering, another key technique, will further refine material properties by manipulating the composition of atoms within the material itself. The collaborative effort, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and involving Imperial College London and the University of Leeds, recognizes the existing strengths within the UK’s research landscape. The five-year program aims to demonstrate not only the creation of these advanced materials, but also their reliable manufacture and deployment in real-world devices, addressing a critical gap between laboratory innovation and commercial viability.

Masers and Enhanced Sensing via Advanced Materials

Highly sensitive masers represent a key device target for the new program, extending development beyond purely quantum sensors and into microwave technology. These devices will use materials engineered at the atomic scale, aiming to surpass the limitations of current materials in precision and performance.

Professor Neil Alford of Imperial College London explained, “Many of the technologies that society will depend on in the coming decades will require levels of precision and performance that cannot be achieved using today’s materials alone.” MEAD intends to address this challenge by creating materials tailored for communications, quantum technologies, and sensing systems.

Professor Edmund Linfield of the University of Leeds highlighted the UK’s existing strengths, stating, “The UK is already globally renowned in areas such as quantum technologies, semiconductor engineering and advanced materials.” MEAD seeks to consolidate these strengths and deliver technologies relevant to national security, advanced sensing, and future quantum computing. The collaborative effort will utilize unique facilities to bridge the gap between fundamental scientific discovery and real-world impact, ensuring that advancements are not confined to the laboratory.

“MEAD is about creating the materials, devices and measurement capabilities needed to unlock the next generation of communications, quantum technologies and sensing systems,” added Alford, underscoring the program’s comprehensive approach to materials development and device realization.

MEAD will build on the internationally recognised strengths in advanced materials, device engineering and quantum technologies in Manchester, Leeds and Imperial, with the ambition of delivering technologies relevant to sovereign security, next-generation sensing and future quantum computing systems. Among its goals are more resilient terrestrial communication networks and quantum sensors capable of detecting extremely small changes in gravitational fields.

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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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