The EPSRC-funded Programme Grant “Airguide Photonics” includes a “Collaboration Fund” to enable the inclusion of new partners to bring additional value to the programme.
Initial engagement will be via short research projects that support the objectives of the programme. Therefore, we are inviting proposals from UK-based academic researchers for projects valued ordinarily up to £50,000, (exceptionally up to £100,000), which directly or indirectly contribute to the areas outlined below and which add benefit to the overall aims of the project.
We are particularly interested to receive proposals on the underlined topics.
Contact Professor Francesco Poletti
Hollow Core Fibre (HCF) development is Airguide Photonics’ core activity which aims to design, develop, fabricate (and supply) the next generation of ultrahigh performance HCFs. Within this core activity we address key manufacturing aspects, including:
Contact Professor David Richardson
We address the key practical and reliability aspects associated with the deployment of HCFs in the real-world applications. Within this activity, we study:
Contact Professor Jayanta Sahu
This theme will develop a suite of amplifiers compatible with the enormous operating bandwidth offered by HCFs. This is key to unlocking long distance HCF transmission and many of the laser, sensor, quantum and metrology applications of HCFs in our other work packages. We work in particular on:
Contact Professor Periklis Petropoulos
We are studying the transformative applications enabled by adoption of hollow-core fibre technology in:
We are also exploring the communications applications of the novel fibre amplifiers developed in the Programme.
Contact Dr Hans Christian Mulvad and Professor David Richardson
The exponential increase in available laser power creates new opportunities to exploit the advantages of coherent light to ablate, weld, mark, vaporize and sense. In numerous application areas however, all-glass fibre-based laser delivery has now reached the fundamental limits of optical fibres, dictated by nonlinear effects, transparency range and/or damage mechanisms to the glass. Hollow Core Fibres (HCFs) with several orders of magnitude lower nonlinearity, higher damage threshold and smaller overlap between the transmitted beam and the surrounding glass, offer a unique possible solution to fibre-based laser delivery of unprecedented power. We are keen to pursue breakthrough applications in the areas of:
Contact Dr Radan Slavik
We are interested in exploiting the long gas/light interactions possible in Hollow Core Fibres (HCFs) as well as their stability with respect to environmental conditions, developing a range of new devices including:
The Call for Proposals is open to any interested UK-based academic research group or individual.
Up to £150,000 is available in this Call. We expect to fund a number of projects and we anticipate individual projects requesting funding up to £50,000 (although for a truly exceptional proposal we will consider funding up to £100,000), It is planned that additional annual calls will be announced in later years, including in 2019 and 2020.
One page-long proposals should be prepared in a pdf format and e-mailed to r.whitehead@soton.ac.uk. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to make initial contact with either the PI (Prof. David Richardson) or the relevant project contact (listed by topic above) before submitting a proposal in order to ensure a good fit with the project’s overall objectives and current status of technological development. This is particularly important if access to particular fibres is required as part of the project.
The proposals should include:
Grants will be funded at 80% of the stated FEC. The remaining 20% must be contributed by the academic institute submitting the proposal. The grant can support any directly incurred (DI) costs, such as research staff time (excluding academic time), consumables and travel to the project partners, but no directly allocated (DA) costs, such as investigator time or overheads. Equipment costs over £10,000 are not permitted. If you require any clarification on DI or DA costs please contact us prior to submitting the proposal.
Proposals should also contain an explanation of how the proposed work fits into the frame of Airguide Photonics and what added value it brings to a specific area of the programme. The PI and/or Co-I(s) of all funded projects will be required to engage fully with the programme and to attend partner meetings as required during the lifetime of the project, including; on commencing, mid project, and at the end of the project. In addition, within one month of the end of the project, a final report will be submitted to the Airguide Photonics Management Group highlighting the project outcomes and impact.
The best proposals will be short-listed based on their innovation, compatibility with the Airguide Photonics programme and the added value that they are offering. Authors of the selected proposals will be asked to give a 15-minute presentation to the Airguide Management Group, followed by a 10-minute questioning session. Following this, the final ranking list will be made.
Awards will be confirmed upon acceptance of the non-negotiable Terms and Conditions set out in the Award Letter.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 12pm on Friday 25th January 2019
Announcement of the short-listed proposals: Tuesday 26th February 2019
Presentation to Airguide Management Group members: Monday 18th March 2019
Announcement of the winning proposals: Monday 25th March 2019