We are entering a new era of technological advancement, where quantum sensing can redefine our critical national infrastructure.
This vision is at the heart of Innovate UK’s latest Contracts for Innovation competition.
Roger McKinlay, Challenge Director Quantum Technologies, Innovate UK, said:
By investing in quantum sensing and navigation today, we are shaping the future.
These innovations will underpin critical systems, drive economic growth, and position the UK as a global leader in quantum-enabled solutions.
Advancing quantum innovation for a resilient future
Innovate UK has awarded £14.8 million to accelerate the development of quantum sensors (QS) and quantum-enabled positioning, navigation, and timing (QPNT) technologies.
These advancements are integral to the UK’s National Quantum Strategy Missions, designed to:
- transform healthcare
- strengthen critical infrastructure in sectors like transport, telecoms, energy and defence
- enhance navigation systems with unprecedented precision and reliability
Catalysing impact across industries
Quantum technologies represent a paradigm shift in capability, offering solutions that will redefine resilience, security, and performance across sectors.
From enabling earlier and more accurate medical diagnoses, to safeguarding transport and energy networks, the competition winners are making a step toward real-world applications that benefit society and the economy.
Further information
The successful projects
Gravity cartography mission: mobile networked quantum sensors for resilient critical infrastructure and mapping at scale
Lead: Delta. G Ltd
Understanding the subterranean environment is critical to how we build, move, extract resources and maintain and protect critical infrastructure.
The persistent gaps in spatial intelligence lead to costly delays, utility strikes, and structural failures costing the UK billions of pounds annually across transport, energy, and construction sectors.
Quantum sensing techniques can overcome these barriers with precision measurements of gravity.
Through cold-atom interferometry, Delta.g’s quantum gravity gradiometer measures how rubidium atoms fall in a vacuum, detecting minuscule changes that reveal the presence of:
- subsurface features
- voids
- tunnels
- buried infrastructure
- geological anomalies
These sensors are immune to vibration, non-invasive and capable of operation in noisy or constrained environments where legacy methods fail.
Delta.g will work closely with:
- the University of Birmingham
- Quantum Sensors, Imaging and Timing Hub
- STL
- Tattu Innovations
- Department for Transport
- His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre
- BAE Systems
This project will progress a deployable quantum sensing platform that enhances spatial intelligence across the subsurface.
TimeLink
Lead: Xairos UK Limited
Today, global synchronisation across modern networks depends heavily on the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), which has become a critical backbone for communications, navigation, and data distribution.
Yet, GNSS is increasingly vulnerable to jamming and spoofing and lacks the precision required for next‑generation applications.
In contrast, Quantum Time Transfer (QTT), leverages entangled photon pairs for highly correlated time signals, offering a robust, quantum‑secure method for distributing precision timing.
Project TimeLink is developing a last‑mile Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) solution based on Xairos’ QTT technology.
TimeLink phase 1 will focus on design and characterisation of a QTT‑based timing hardware product.
Early QTT prototypes, supported by extensive modelling, have demonstrated precision levels up to 1,000 times better than GNSS.
Rail Quantum Inertial Navigation System (RQINS): product maturity roadmap development
Lead: Monirail Ltd
This project builds on previous Innovate UK Quantum Catalyst funding that demonstrated the concept of the Rail Quantum Inertial Navigation System (RQINS).
The current project focuses on the development of a product maturity roadmap and undertaking product performance evaluation to detail the next stages of development for the RQINS concept.
MoniRail will lead the consortium, bringing together Imperial College London and the University of Sussex, who provide the novel quantum sensors that underpin the positioning system.
QinetiQ will support the project by developing advanced map-matching capabilities.
Transport for London is the direct end-user, with further support from PA Consulting and GBRX (Great British Railway Innovation organisation).
Quantum sensor for orbitrap mass spectrometry: enhanced speed and sensitivity for healthcare analysis
Lead: NPL Management Limited
Mass spectrometry is the leading technology used in healthcare to both identify and quantify biomolecules.
This is important in hospitals to measure molecules in blood that give critical information to clinicians if a patient is responding to treatments for cancer and other diseases.
This allows effective drug treatment tailoring and fast identification of pathogenic bacteria, buying important clinical time for interventions.
Orbitrap mass spectrometers are popular due to their high resolving power.
However, a drawback of this technology is the classical detection circuit reduces the sensitivity.
To address this, NPL has invented a super-sensitive quantum sensor that will increase the limit of detection by a factor of 10.
This means clinical scientists will be able to detect important signals that previously were lost in the noise.
This project will also develop a quantum squeezing approach that will increase the speed of analysis by a factor of three, saving time for the same quality of measurement.
Q-ASSET Quantum-all solid state enhanced timing
Lead: Nascent Semiconductor Limited
GNSS based navigation is ubiquitous in everyday life.
Beyond guiding delivery drivers, satellite-based timing supports communications, power distribution, and railways.
However, these signals are extremely weak at ground level and vulnerable to blockage or deliberate disruption, as reported by the Royal Institute of Navigation in the past few years.
A solution is to develop compact, high-accuracy clocks that can maintain timing in the absence of satellite signals, supporting essential infrastructure.
The use of quantum technology offers a significant improvement in the accuracy of these clocks.
However, the majority of quantum systems are heavy, delicate and require infrastructure that constrains them to a research laboratory.
Based on semiconductor technology a new generation of quantum devices is now a reality.
Nascent Semiconductor demonstrated the first quantum clock based on a microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (the microwave equivalent of a LASER) in 2025, opening up a wide range of new possibilities.
The stability of the timing signal needs to increase further, whilst demonstrating a system that is not affected by external influences, so that it can be deployed in real world applications.
Quantum eye scanning to eliminate backlogs in the NHS’s busiest outpatient speciality
Lead: Siloton Limited
With 420 million people reporting chronic eye disease, and patient populations expected to grow as the world ages and diet quality declines, eye diseases present a global challenge.
In the NHS, ophthalmology is the busiest outpatient specialty, and 10% of the NHS waiting list is for ophthalmology appointments.
Capacity limitations are caused by limited access to optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices, which are large, heavy, fragile and costly.
Siloton’s solution is to shift the hardware for OCT from bulk optics to a quantum chip.
This chip is smaller than a £1 coin, is stable to knocks and bumps, and can be produced at low cost in high volumes.
Overall, this project will detail a clear path for Siloton to finish developing its novel quantum technology, and for NHS adoption, helping to solve one of the UK’s most pressing health challenges.
A roadmap to clinical adoption of quantum-enabled brain imaging
Lead: Cerca Magnetics Limited
Epilepsy can be a debilitating and life-threatening condition where patients experience recurrent seizures.
It is caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain and, using quantum sensors (called magnetoencephalography with optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG)), the fields that this abnormal activity generates can be detected, allowing diagnosis.
By looking at the spatial pattern of fields, it can be pinpointed precisely where in the brain the epilepsy is generated.
Conventional technology like electroencephalograms and magnetoencephalography scanners exist, but OPM-MEG is more cost effective, can be deployed across the lifespan, and has unprecedented performance.
Cerca Magnetics will design the first OPM-MEG scanner for use in epilepsy.
Additionally, OPM-MEG is promising for diagnosis and management of other disorders, from childhood (for example autism) to old age (for example dementia).
This project will also provide the catalyst for wider adoption, and a route to help more of the over 10 million people in the UK who suffer from a brain health problem.
Infra-red single photon imaging, ranging and sensing (InSPIRS)
Lead: Toshiba Europe Limited
The InSPIRS project develops next-generation single-photon detection technologies to support advanced quantum sensing and PNT applications.
Led by Toshiba Europe Limited, the project will deliver two key innovations.
First, it will create new semiconductor detector components, known as Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes, using a UK-based supply chain.
Second, the project will develop a standalone detection system capable of operating at unprecedented speeds (10 times faster than current commercial offerings).
This system will feature integrated electronics and a user-friendly software platform, enabling ease-of-use by others to adapt it for a wide range of applications.
By combining cutting-edge hardware development with strategic supply chain resilience, InSPIRS will strengthen the UK’s position in quantum technologies and primes the successful delivery of the government’s flagship Quantum Missions.
The project supports the UK’s National Quantum Strategy and contributes to the development of secure, sovereign capabilities in critical quantum infrastructure.
QuDiFi: quantum radio frequency sensor system for direction finding
Lead: Coldquanta UK Limited
This project will develop a prototype direction-finding system based on quantum radio frequency sensor technology, offering a new approach to detecting and locating radio signals across a wide range of frequencies.
The prototype will be designed for deployment in mobile or tactical environments, with input from end-users.
The project will focus on sensor head design, signal processing, and integration with existing radio frequency platforms, with a clear pathway toward miniaturisation and field trials in future phases.
The resulting system will demonstrate how next-generation quantum sensing can enhance UK capabilities in radio frequency sensing, direction finding, and signal-based navigation.
All without reliance on traditional antenna arrays or re-radiating components.
Single-photon raman tritium analyser
Lead: Curtiss-Wright Wimborne Limited
Nuclear fusion reactors are set to become a crucial piece of the zero-carbon puzzle, providing much-needed base-load capability to compliment renewables.
Fusion reactors use tritium, an extremely valuable substance, as fuel.
Accurate and real-time monitoring of tritium is of fundamental importance.
Curtiss Wright and Fraunhofer CAP propose to develop a single-photon, time-correlated ‘quantum’ Raman instrument for the real-time detection and quantification of tritium.
Such an instrument will add a crucial missing capability to the UK fusion reactor community. It will contribute to the UK’s net zero and fusion technology aspirations.
Then, as fusion technology transitions from experimental facilities to commercial reality, it will become a vehicle for export sales into a very high-value sector.
AQlock 2
Lead: Aquark Technologies Limited
Accurate and stable time is a critical resource that forms the backbone of modern society.
Loss of this by GNSS denial has significant economic impact, as we rely on timing signals in areas like communications, data networks, and power distribution.
Aquark Technologies has patented and demonstrated technologies that have the potential to scale-up production and reduce costs of commercially available clocks, allowing applications into strategic markets such as telecommunication.
With this project, Aquark is engaging with a telecom provider with the aim to develop a cold atom atomic clock meeting the requirements of the telecommunications market.
This clock is based on a successful output of a previous Innovate UK grant, but with a greater focus on commercial viability.
It will build the foundation for the future miniaturised low-cost atomic clocks.
SrROCK (Strontium-ruggedized optical beam clock)
Lead: Quantum Fabrix Limited
Atomic clocks are the foundational technology for precise and accurate navigation.
In line with the UK’s National Quantum Strategy, Quantum Fabrix aims to address this pressing technological challenge, creating a resilient local timing device, in the form of a compact atomic clock.
In using the industry leading capabilities of atomic beam generation systems at Quantum Fabrix, they will create a timing solution of unprecedented ruggedisation.
This will permit navigation in the most challenging of operational environments.
Single-photon flash Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) in the middle-infrared spectral region for imaging in challenging environment
Lead: Fraunhofer UK Research Limited
Fog, smoke or haze particles contribute to optical losses of laser radiation mainly via the scattering effect.
It was established experimentally that this effect is lower for longer wavelengths.
The choice of laser wavelength in mid-infrared (IR) spectral region for LiDAR systems suitable for operation in the presence of natural or battlefield obscurants is determined only by windows of transparency of the atmosphere in this spectral range.
Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics (FhCAP) have previously developed a diode-pumped solid-state laser suitable for targeted application of flash LiDAR system.
It emits in mid-infrared spectral region with the oscillation wavelengths.
However, detection side of this LiDAR is still a challenge.
This project addresses this challenge by developing a frequency up-conversion module for wide field of view single-photon imaging in the middle-infrared spectral region will be developed.
The project is led by FhCAP and is supported by:
- BAE
- Thales
- QinetiQ
- Leonardo
- Covesion Ltd
- Photon Force Ltd
SPECTRA
Lead: British Telecommunications Public Limited Company
SPECTRA is an innovative research and development project that aims to deliver a next-generation RF sensor based on quantum principles.
This novel sensor will provide a frequency-agile, electromagnetically pulse resistant detection capability, offering a transformative approach to RF signal reception for both defence and civilian applications.
It will have dual-use potential across defence, telecommunications and critical infrastructure.
At the heart of SPECTRA is a groundbreaking quantum sensing platform that leverages the unique properties of Rydberg atoms with highly excited energy states.
This work is being led by BT Group, a world leader in quantum sensing research, in collaboration with STL-Tech, a specialist in commercialising deep-tech innovations.
Together, the partners aim to position the UK at the forefront of quantum-enabled RF sensing and deliver a sovereign capability with global impact.
This work contributes to the objectives of the National Quantum Strategy, in particular Mission 4 and 5.