Critical Technologies Accelerator

The Critical Technologies Accelerator (CTA), based within the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at the University of Glasgow, was funded specifically to support industrial activity in the high growth semiconductor, Photonics and Quantum markets. This 2-year pilot programme has been designed to look at how a shared resource of highly skilled engineers can accelerate the development of five nascent technologies, identified by industry with risk profiles and technical challenges that typically lie beyond the scope of individual companies. The CTA is a 12-person engineering team with a range of expertise in designing, fabricating, testing and characterising nanofabricated technologies that compliment the skills of industrial partners, effectively augmenting the size of their engineering teams. The internationally renowned, James Watt Nanofabrication Centre sits at the heart of the fabrication of these technologies. It is already evident within the programme that the collective engineering expertise of the CTA team is able to deliver across five projects with a pace that is not typically seen from standard Innovate UK SMART projects. The five projects are all at different stages of market readiness. This means that the learnings from projects that are close to market can accelerate the progression of projects that are further away from their own market opportunities. It is clear that the diverse depth of skills which exist within the CTA is likely to have an extremely positive influence on the commercialisation opportunities that the industrial partners are looking to exploit. The CTA work with a diverse range of partners focusing on the following applications: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for Telecoms Atomic Clocks Sensing AR/VR Quantum Computing The CTA welcome enquiries from Industry, so please feel free to get in touch at CTA-Support@glasgow.ac.uk