FET-Open Research and Innovation Actions

FET-Open Research and Innovation Actions

Prof Valerio Pruneri awarded grant for a super-sensitive quantum microscope on a chip the size of a coin.

ICREA Prof at ICFO Valerio Pruneri has been awarded one of the twenty-seven FET Open awards in the most recent FET-Open Research and Innovation Actions Call for his project entitled Q-MIC. FET Open is a Future and Emerging Technologies scheme covering all topics and research areas. It aims at bringing together the brightest European minds at an early stage of research to pave the way for innovations, radical new ideas and novel technologies that challenge current thinking.

This highly competitive call had a success rate of just 12%. It is the third and the last call of its kind under the Work Programme 2016-2017, bringing the number of ongoing Horizon 2020 FET-Open Research and Innovation Actions to 123, funded with about EUR 400 million by the EU.

Q-MIC is a highly ambitious and interdisciplinary project that aims at developing a new on-chip differential interference contrast microscope based on an unconventional birefringence lens-free configuration, the latest quantum sources and single-photon image sensors. This unique combination of features will allow, on the one hand, the first demonstration of a practical quantum device for imaging, while providing, on the other hand, a platform for fundamentally new lines of research in quantum metrology, including the interaction of quantum states and bio-species. Collaborating with ICFO will be four internationally recognized research institutes including The Austrian Academy of Sciences (AT), Politecnico di Milano (IT), and University of Glasgow (UK) and three leading companies, Micro Photon Devices S.R.L (IT), Carl Zeiss AG (DE) and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (DE).

Congratulations Valerio!