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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - QuantERA (QuantERA ERA-NET Cofund in Quantum Technologies)

Teaser

Summary

The central objective of the QuantERA Programme was to launch a transnational Co-funded Call for proposals that would cover 26 countries and contribute to further integration of European research in quantum technologies. The aim was successfully achieved. QuantERA Co-funded Call, announced in January and closed in July 2017, attracted unexpectedly high attention of the research community. 1087 applicants were involved in the preparation of 221 pre-proposals submitted in the first stage of the Call. Budget requested at this phase exceeded EUR 235 M. At the second stage of the Call, QuantERA Call Secretariat received 91 full proposals involving 490 applicants from all 26 participating countries, requesting funding of about EUR 107 M.

Thanks to the joint funding provided by the European Commission and the QuantERA member organisations, in November 2017, the QuantERA Consortium finally recommended 26 excellent international proposals for funding of over EUR 32 M. The projects involve 128 research teams from 23 countries. QuantERA Projectsâ€™ Launch Event will be organized on 24-25 April, 2018 in Bucharest, Romania to officialise the implementation of the projects.

From the beginning of the Programme, QuantERA aimed at spreading research excellence across European Research Area by encouraging consortia to include partners from the widening countries participating in the network (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey). Finally, 70% of the successful projects involve research teams from widening countries.

Work performed

In the first months of the implementation of the QuantERA Programme the management structures were established and the procedures for the functioning of the Consortium were defined and formally approved. Simultaneously, the Consortium established the channels of communication among the beneficiaries as well as with external entities.

The official launch of the Programme took place in Lisbon, in December 2016. The event brought together representatives of 32 organisations constituting the QuantERA Consortium and members of QuantERAâ€™s advisory body, namely the Strategic Advisory Board (SAB).
QuantERA Consortium started its work on the QuantERA Co-funded Call 2017 from the early beginning of the implementation of the Programme. Once the scientific input from the Strategic Advisory Board had been received the Consortium defined the scope and the research topics of the Call.

The procedures of the Co-funded Call were developed gradually taking under consideration the recommendations of the European Commission, prior experiences of the members of the QuantERA Consortium and scientific and social objectives which QuantERA embraced in the Grant Agreement.
Early start enabled the Consortium to pre-announce the Call in December 2016. The official announcement was made on January 13th, 2017. QuantERA Call 2017 was subsequently widely communicated to the scientific community through national and European channels and according to the communication plans developed within the Consortium. Information about the new funding opportunity was additionally promoted during the QuantERA Proposersâ€™ Day organized in Malta on February 16th, 2017. The event attracted unprecedented attention of about 100 researchers from the field of quantum technologies.
European research community showed high interest in the QuantERA Call 2017 submitting 221 pre-proposals during the first stage of the Call, which was closed on March 15th, 2017. Each pre-proposal was reviewed, evaluated and ranked by the scientific Evaluation Panel, based on the criteria recommended by the European Commission. Out of all received pre-proposals, 165 were evaluated above the quality threshold, and among these 91 were invited by the QuantERA Steering Committee to the 2nd stage of the evaluation process.
All consortia invited to the 2nd stage of the QuantERA Call 2017 submitted their full proposals, which then went through the 2nd stage evaluation process performed by the scientific Evaluation Panel and the external experts. The criteria of Excellence, Impact and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation were applied again. Individual evaluation reports of each proposal were forwarded to the Projectsâ€™ Coordinators in September during the â€˜Rebuttal Stageâ€™ allowing them to address any factual inaccuracies raised by the experts.

The 2nd stage evaluation process gathered scientific experts from all over the world who established a ranking list of the proposals. 6 projects scored below the quality threshold, whereas the remaining 85 were positively evaluated and recommended for funding.
Depending on national/regional budgets and available co-financing from the European Commission the Research Funding Organisations constituting the QuantERA Consortium finally selected 26 full-proposals with the highest evaluation score for funding corresponding to requested funding of over EUR 32 M. The projects selected for funding include partners from 23 countries and represent all six targeted research areas which were described in the Call Announcement.

Within the first reporting period the Consortium opened the discussion about the second, non-cofunded call within the Programme, which will find its conclusion in 2018.

Final results

Quantum technologies hold the promise of exploiting specifically quantum phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement in information processing, communication, sensing, metrology, and beyond. These applications are enabled by enormous progress in the ability to manipulate individual quantum systems, such as photons and atoms. Practical utilization of this potential requires a concerted effort involving different fields of research, such as computer science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, materials engineering. Expertise required to carry out research projects in this area often could not be found in a single European country. This provided rationale to establish the QuantERA Programme with the central objective to fund cutting-edge transnational research in the area of quantum technologies.

The main outcome of the first year of the programme was successful implementation of a joint call by 30 research funding organisations. After rigorous evaluation of submitted proposals, 26 projects were selected for funding exceeding 34 million Euro, including the contribution allocated by the European Commission through the ERA-NET Cofund mechanism. They aim in particular to develop novel physical platforms for quantum communication, sensing and computing, advance architectures and algorithms for future quantum information processing systems, and push for hardware scalability. The results of funded projects are expected to address a number of societal challenges, such as cybersecurity and healthcare.