Projects
The NEST Group is involved in numerous research projects, working in collaboration with leading academic and industrial research labs from around the world. Some of more major projects are detailed below.
| Project title | Description |
|---|---|
| Tailored Electromagnetic and Acoustics Accelerator (Team A) | Academic lead: Prof Geoff Nash This is a ~£2.5 million EPSRC Prosperity Partnership project working with QinetiQ PLC on the development of next-generation metamaterials approaches for the control of microwaves, acoustic waves and light. |
| Fun-COMP - Functionally scaled computing technology: From novel devices to non-von Neumann architectures and algorithms for a connected intelligent world | Academic lead: Prof C David Wright A €4 million H2020 project involving seven academic and industrial partners – the Universities of Exeter, Oxford and Muenster, IMEC, C2C-CNRS, Thales-TRT and IBM Zurich – developing ground breaking hardware technologies in the field of brain-inspired and non-von Neumann computing. |
| Zero Power, Large Area Rail Track Monitoring | Academic lead: Prof Meling Zhu A £1.3 million project in collaboration with the University of Birmingham and Network Rail that aims to develop cross-cutting, bespoke, deployable technologies and a demonstrator of a self-powered wireless sensor network monitoring system that is capable of scaling-up for large geographical rail track monitoring. |
| PHOENICS - Photonic enabled Petascale in-memory computing with Femtojoule energy consumption | Academic lead: Prof C David Wright A €5 million H2020 project to develop ultra-fast, ultra-low power photonic processors for AI applications. In collaboration with the Universities of Muenster, Oxford and Ghent, along with IBM Zurich, EPFL, Fraunhofer, Nanoscribe and Micror Systems. |
| Ultrafast Quantum Light Sources | Academic lead: Dr Isaac Luxmoore An EPSRC Fellowship project, in collaboration with Hitachi Cambridge, to develop single photon light sources for quantum computing applications. |
| Smart Composite Material for Advanced Building Fenestration to Enhance Energy Efficiency | Academic lead: Prof Y Zhu Working in collaboration with the NSG group and Yorkshire Photonics Ltd, this ~£1 million EPSRD project is developing new technology to reduce energy demand in the built environment, by reducing heat loss and controlling incoming solar radiation to maximise solar gain. |
| Picosecond Dynamics of Magnetic Exchange Springs | Academic lead: Prof Gino Hrkac An EPSRC-funded project working in collaboration with Seagate to develop high-performance, next-generation magnetic hard disk materials |
| EPSRC CDT in Metmaterials | Academic leads: Prof C David Wright and Dr Isaac Luxmoore A ~£10 million investment by the EPSRC, the University of Exeter and industry (e.g. dstl, QinetiQ, Thales, Leonardo, BAE Systems, Pepsico and many more) to provide advanced research training for PhD students in the area of metamaterials. To date we have enrolled over 100 PhD researchers and graduated more than 50, making us one of the biggest CDTs in the UK |
| Manufacturing solar fabrics by electronic dyeing of textiles with 2D heterostructures | Academic lead: Prof Monica Craciun An EPSRC funded project, in collaboration with the University of Averio and Heathcote Ltd to develop textile-compatible manufacturing of solar fabrics based on 2D materials including semiconducting TMDCs as active layers and highly conductive graphene as electrodes. |
| Controlling Acoustic Metamaterials with Magnetic Resonances: The Best of Both Worlds | Academic lead: Prof Geoff Nash A ~£0.75 million EPSRC project, in collaboration with colleagues from our Physics Department, to develop a new class of magneto-acoustic metamaterials for use in surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices. |
| Self-powered wearable sensors for vital signs monitoring | Academic lead: Dr Ana Neves An EPSRC ‘new investigator’ project to develop graphene-based and self-powered vital signs sensors fully integrated on textiles and with wireless communication capabilities. Working in collaboration with UCL, Centexbel, and Heathcote Ltd. |
| High Performance Energy Harvesting Sensor Systems for Critical Asset Monitoring | Academic lead: Prof Meiling Zhu |