Cotter leads the Quantum Navigation research stream at Imperial's Centre for Cold Matter. He develops compact, fieldable cold-atom inertial sensors for GPS-denied navigation. Milestones: first demonstration of a cold-atom accelerometer on the London Underground (measuring acceleration/vibration in a real transit environment); successful field trials of quantum inertial sensors aboard the Royal Navy research ship XV Patrick Blackett (2023); Arctic field trials with Royal Navy (2025). His sensors use magnetically launched cold-atom Rb clouds and simultaneous multi-axis interferometry. He also contributes to AION-related atom interferometry work and the Quantum Technology Hub in Sensors and Timing. Department of Materials cross-appointment.

Croot returned from Princeton to found Sydney's Superconducting Quantum Circuits Laboratory. The programme uses superconducting circuits both as quantum processors and as extremely sensitive probes: coupling microwave resonators and qubits to other degrees of freedom (mechanical modes, semiconductor structures, spins) to build hybrid systems, and developing the quantum-limited amplification chain that makes single-microwave-photon detection possible. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — superconducting circuits are the principal competitor technology for detecting the weak microwave signals that NV ensembles read magnetically; a quantum-limited or squeezed microwave amplifier is what lets an inductively-detected spin ensemble reach — and beat — the pT/sqrt(Hz) regime. Newly established, well-equipped lab; high autonomy for a postdoc and active recruitment as the lab builds out.

Crozier holds a joint Physics/Electrical Engineering chair and runs a nanophotonics laboratory spanning plasmonic and dielectric metasurfaces, on-chip optical trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles and cells, mid-infrared spectroscopy and detection with metasurface-enhanced and colloidal-nanocrystal devices, and light emission from 2D semiconductors. The unifying theme is engineering the local optical density of states to increase the signal available from a very small number of emitters or molecules. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the plasmonic and dielectric antenna work is the same physics used to raise photon collection efficiency and hence the shot-noise floor of NV-ensemble magnetometers operating at pT/sqrt(Hz). Note: a substantial fraction of the group's output is device fabrication rather than sensitivity-limited measurement, which is a caveat against the stated preference.

Curry's group works on advanced electronic materials with emphasis on quantum technology applications. Research directions: (1) Single-ion implantation and detection — using P-NAME (Manchester's unique instrument for ion implantation at 20 nm accuracy) to deterministically place single rare-earth ions (Er3+, Pr3+) in photonic substrates for quantum memory and sensing; (2) Er:Si and Er:SiO2 photonics — developing silicon-compatible Er-doped waveguides and cavities emitting at 1.5 µm for quantum network interfaces; (3) Colloidal quantum dots for sensing — photon-number-resolved detection using InAs QDs; (4) Ion beam technologies — SIMS and focused ion beam for quantum material characterization and fabrication. Access to P-NAME facility is unique in UK.

The de Leon lab engineers nitrogen-vacancy and other color centers in diamond and wide-bandgap materials as solid-state quantum sensors and qubits, spanning materials growth and surface chemistry, nanophotonic integration, and magnetic-field/thermal sensing of quantum materials, alongside a parallel effort on superconducting qubit noise and loss. This builds on the broader tradition of ensemble NV magnetometry (DEER, NMR, T1 relaxometry) that has reached pT/sqrt(Hz)-class sensitivities, which de Leon's group extends toward single- and few-spin scanning-probe magnetometry of correlated electron materials.

de Lera Acedo heads the Cavendish Radio Astronomy and Cosmology group and is PI of the REACH experiment, a global 21-cm signal radiometer deployed in the Karoo desert, South Africa, targeting detection of the redshifted hydrogen signal from the Cosmic Dawn (z≈7.5–28). He has a PDRA opening for 21-cm cosmology data analysis. Research spans novel antenna design, ultra-low-noise receiver calibration (achieving ~80 mK RMSE), Bayesian foreground modelling, and RFI mitigation. He also leads the CosmoCube space mission concept for lunar-orbit 21-cm observations and is active in SKA development and HERA. He is actively hiring postdocs (PDRA posting live in 2025).

Simone De Liberato's Quantum Theory and Technology group explores quantum electrodynamics in semiconductor systems. Research: (1) ultrastrong and deep-strong light-matter coupling in polariton and circuit QED systems; (2) mid-infrared polariton physics with potential sensing applications; (3) virtual photon condensation and vacuum fluctuations in quantum materials; (4) positronium density measurements using polaritonic effects. Relevant to quantum sensing via strong coupling platforms.

Degen leads the Spin Physics and Imaging group, one of the world's leading NV-center magnetometry labs. Research directions (as of 2025): (1) Scanning NV magnetometry of quantum materials — NV-tipped cantilevers image current flow (≲50 nm resolution) in graphene heterostructures and resolve domain walls in antiferromagnets/ferroelectrics; cryogenic scanning down to 350 mK in dilution refrigerator (published Appl. Phys. Lett. 2022). (2) Single-molecule NMR — shallow NV centers detect nuclear spins from surface-adsorbed molecules with sub-nanometer 3D resolution; 2022 Nano Lett. on amine-functionalized diamond surfaces; exploring chirality-induced spin selectivity at few-molecule level. (3) NV magnetometry protocols — reconstruction-free waveform sensing (1.1 ns time resolution, Nature 2025), gradiometric detection, spectrum demodulation for rapid scanning, multi-NV addressing. (4) Diamond nanoengineering — multicone pillar waveguides, surface engineering, scanning probe fabrication. ERC Proof-of-Concept 2025 for photonic IC single-photon NV excitation/detection for commercial quantum sensing.

Cees Dekker (Distinguished University Professor, BioNanoscience/Kavli) pioneered solid-state nanopores and single-molecule biophysics. Research: (1) solid-state nanopores for protein sensing and sequencing — detecting individual protein molecules by current blockade; (2) DNA loop extrusion by condensin and cohesin at the single-molecule level; (3) chromatin structure and chromosome organisation with bacteria-on-chip; (4) synthetic cell construction from the bottom up; (5) diagnostic nanopores for neglected diseases. NanoFront 51M€ NWO program leader; 2019 Nature paper on real-time DNA loop extrusion imaging.

Devlin is a Royal Society URF at the Centre for Cold Matter building a new experiment to detect axion and dark matter particles. His prior work at CERN's BASE collaboration (Penning trap antiproton experiment) used the ultra-sensitive superconducting detection circuit of a cryogenic Penning trap to set new constraints on axion-like particle couplings to photons (~2.79 neV/c² range; PRL 2021). At Imperial he is developing a Penning trap single-photon counter concept using a single trapped electron to detect 30–60 GHz photons from axion-photon conversion in a strong magnetic field (arXiv 2601.05472, March 2026), targeting axion masses of 124–248 μeV. This approach could overcome the standard quantum noise limit that hampers conventional haloscope searches at high mass. Active PDRA posting open May 2025.