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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.
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.
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.
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.
Academic lead: Dr Isaac Luxmoore
An EPSRC Fellowship project, in collaboration with Hitachi Cambridge, to develop single photon light sources for quantum computing applications.
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.
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 ÄÚÉä´óÄÌ 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
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.
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.
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.

Academic lead: Prof Meiling Zhu
A ~£0.25 million Royal Society Industrial Fellowship project working with  to develop self-powered critical asset monitoring systems using energy harvesting technology.