News & Events

We are very pleased to announce that a pan-European consortium, led by IPIC’s Dr Gediminas Juska, has been awarded a European Innovation Council (EIC) grant through its Pathfinder Open instrument. The grant, worth €3M, is titled QCEED “Quantum Dot Coupling Engineering (and dynamic spin decoupling/deep nuclei cooling); 2-Dimensional Cluster State Generation for Quantum Information Processing” and was developed from an initial concept by Drs Emanuele Pelucchi and Gediminas Juska of the Epitaxy and Physics of Nanostructures Group at Tyndall.

QCEED brings together some of the world’s leading researchers in semiconductor nanotechnology design and fabrication, applied to quantum photonics, in a risky and highly interdisciplinary research project. The overarching objective of QCEED is to find solutions to current bottlenecks to quantum computation with integrated photonics. If successful, large scale, on chip, quantum photonic computation will be significantly closer. “Scalable” photonic universal quantum computation exploits the measurement-based quantum computing paradigm relying on multi-dimensional photonic cluster states. However, the technological capability to generate on-demand, large-scale 2-dimensional cluster states has not yet been proven. QCEED will demonstrate the (large-scale, i.e., many photons) emission of 2-dimensional cluster states of light thanks to the development of new engineered paired semiconductor quantum dot (QD) systems, and the exploitation of advanced deep nuclei cooling and/or dynamic spin decoupling to improve system coherence time. QCEED will also tackle the essential requirement for scalable quantum computation -that is to efficiently funnel the generated photons into specific photonic modes.

The QCEED coordinator Dr Juska says, “I am very excited about the prospect of coordinating this innovative project with the other partners as we strive to open new horizons in photonic quantum information processing”.

Welcoming the news, our Martin O’Connell, EU Programmes Manager commented, “I would like to congratulate Drs Pelucchi and Juska on their success in this most competitive instrument of Horizon Europe. In 2024 only 45 high risk/high gain projects out of 1119 submissions were selected for funding so the award of QCEED is testament to the extremely high quality of both the concept and submission by the Tyndall-led consortium and am looking forward to hearing of the future solutions”

The QCEED project runs from Feb 2025 to Jan 2029 with other partners comprising of Masaryk Uni (Cz), CNR (It), Warsaw Polytechnic (PL), CEA (Fr), iii-V Labs (Fr) and Day One (It).

In 2024, CDT Photonic Integration and Advanced Data Storage (PIADS) have once again been a hive of activity, and our PhD students have been involved in countless projects across the photonics and magnetic data storage landscape. Enjoy browsing through our report as our students share their research successes and collaborations with industry partners.

Public engagement @IPIC, on Thursday 10th October, researchers from Dublin & Cork’s Optical Communication department visited Valentia Island in County Kerry as part of the Valentia Island Subsea Cable Symposium at the Valentia Island Transatlantic Cable Station. Researchers engaged in presentations on the history, security and geopolitics of subsea cables.

Furthermore, they then met with the CEO of the Valentia Island Development Company to discuss potential future collaborations on initiatives being run on the island.

In the midst of all this, they were also able to visit the primary school on the island, where they provided some light educational engagement with the 4th, 5th and 6th class children, where the children learnt about light and got the opportunity to create their own spectroscopes.

Our Researchers have many opportunities to engage with members of the public, outreach events and school visits.  We recently asked colleague Walter Messina, Biomedical Engineer for feedback on his Education & Public Engagement work –
For me it’s a great opportunity to introduce to kids some scientific concepts at an early age to trigger their curiosity to explore science and want to know more. I always want to add a fun element to the experience while adding some practical experiments to be done in class in front of their own eyes to see their excitement. I am always amazed to learn how they see science from their perspective and discover the points of view of a young mind, which makes me, in turn, see science from a different angle.

Should you have any queries on our Education & Public Engagement activities you can contact us at info@ipic.ie

We are delighted to congratulate our colleague Prof. Frank Peters on receipt of SFI Industry Partnership Award 2023.  This is in recognition of his work with IPIC in partnership with Rockley Photonics, University College Cork & Tyndall National Institute. Frank has been working  in photonic research for over 30 years, he has filed over 80 patents. He has been part of three start-ups including, most recently, Rockley Photonics and the creation of the Irish research division of Rockley.  On the award Frank responded “I am delighted to receive the SFI Industry Partnership Award. None of this would have been possible without the outstanding IPIC team at Tyndall, who provided the support, encouragement and hard work required to enable the research and development projects – thank you to David McGovern, Patrick Morrissey, Ann Heffernan, Anna Kaar, Paul Townsend (IPIC), and Anthony Morrissey (UCC Innovation). Thanks to Rockley Photonics and the wonderful research partnership with them. I am also thankful to the School of Physics, and SEFS for providing the flexibility to let me spend extended time working with industry.” 

Paper III-V-on-Si DFB Laser With Co-Integrated Power Amplifier Realized Using Micro-Transfer Printing published by IEEE is currently in the top 3 downloaded in IEEE Photonics Technology letters this year.   This work was supported in part by both the European Union and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI).   Credit goes to a number of Researchers, including IPIC’s own Brian Corbett and Emanuele Pelucchi.  Follow this link to read the paper.

IPIC host the Photonics Ireland Pavilion at the SPIE BiOS and Photonics West conference & exhibition 2023. This event is attracting thousands of attendees keen to engage with industry partners and technologists, with over 1100 exhibiting companies.   You will find Photonics Ireland Pavillion at booth 4645.  We have a strong representation from Ireland across Tyndall, IPIC and industry colleagues from BioPixS; Eblana Photonics; mBryonics; Pilot Photonics; X-Celeprint and iSLight.

Many of our colleagues have also presented papers at the conference, below are members of the Biophotonics team.

Please reach out if you’d like any further information info@ipic.ie