June 17, 2026 -- Two projects led by investigators from the IQN Hub have been awarded funding through the highly competitive “QuantERA Call 2025”. QuantERA, a major European funding programme supported by the European Commission, unites more than 40 Research Funding Organisations from over 30 countries, in Europe and beyond. Its core mission is to advance basic and applied research in quantum technologies, fostering collaboration, and strengthening the quantum ecosystem with sustainable funding.

The 2025 call saw an exceptional level of interest, with 287 proposals submitted by over 1,400 research teams representing 29 countries. Following a rigorous evaluation process, just 39 projects were selected for funding, with a total investment of approximately €53 million.

The successful two projects led by IQN Hub investigators are:

DEMAND (Deterministic, Electrically-driven Monolithic Architectures for Network Distribution), co-ordinated by Luke Wilson (University of Sheffield),a three-year €1.5million initiative. The research team includes IQN Hub researchers Alistair Brash and National Epitaxy Facility Director Jon Heffernan, together with Dominic Hallett, Elisa Sala and Imad Faruque.

The DEMAND project aims to overcome a key bottleneck in scalable optical quantum technologies by delivering the first fully monolithic, electrically-driven, and deterministic single-photon source that operates in the telecom C-band.

To achieve this, the initiative targets wafer-scale, monolithic integration of advanced telecoms lasers with quantum dot single-photon sources, with the goal of generating highly pure and indistinguishable photons at rates exceeding 1 GHz.

Ultimately, the project seeks to field-validate the multi-channel devices through high-rate entanglement swapping in real-world networking environments, establishing a scalable hardware blueprint for future quantum networks.

The project consortium brings together a strong network of academic and industry partners, including Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), ICON Photonics (France), the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest (Romania), the University of Geneva (Switzerland), and UK-based Aegiq Ltd.

The AL FreSQO (Atom-Light Free-Space Quantum Optics networking) project is a three-year,€1.75 millionproject co-ordinated by Daniel Oi andAidan Arnold(University of Strathclyde).

The project also involves IQN Hub Researcher Patrick Ledingham at the University of Southampton, together with Humboldt University, University of Padua, ThinkQuantum, and Sabancı University.

AL FreSQO will develop quantum ‘memories’ – systems to store quantum information – for communication networks based on cold atoms.

Quantum memories can be used in repeater devices that buffer data over long distance links, helping to mitigate signal loss through the distribution of entanglement. Quantum entanglement, which allows secure communications and enables more efficient sensing and computation, is a fundamental resource for quantum information technologies.

AL FreSQO will explore how quantum communications can operate using several technologies, including free-space optical links, as an alternative to fibre networks, and systems which inter-convert the wavelength of light between those used in telecommunications and those that can more easily ‘talk’ to quantum systems.

These approaches could reduce the need for bulky, energy-intensive cryogenic systems, which are frequently used for alternative quantum memory platforms.