The West of England Combined Authority is investing £20 million in a technology innovation centre that will support new research, entrepreneurs and businesses.

The funding will be used to extend the scope of the University of Bristol’s Quantum Technology Innovation Centre (QTIC), helping to position the West of England as a global leader in ‘deep tech’ innovation.

A pilot programme will be developed over the next six months, and the full-scale facility will be based at the Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus — designed to be at the forefront of digital, business and social innovation.

By bringing researchers, students, entrepreneurs and users of the technology together under the same roof, the university will broaden the support for a wide range of disruptive technological approaches by lowering the barriers to entry.

Plans to establish the QTIC were first announced in 2017, when the University of Bristol (www.bristol.ac.uk) secured £14.97 million of Local Growth Fund support from the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership — administered by the West of England Combined Authority.

The additional £20 million will be used to extend these facilities (QTIC+) for the development of new businesses, products and services to explore emerging and new applications for quantum and other disruptive technologies,
taking them out of the laboratory and into the commercial world.

Experts predict that harnessing the quantum world — the behaviour of matter and energy at the atomic and sub-atomic level — will revolutionise technology by making it faster, smaller, more secure and ultimately more useful for a wide variety of applications.

Guy Orpen, deputy vice-chancellor for new campus development, said: “The new QTIC+ facility will further enable the region to become the ‘go to’ place for development, commercialisation and growth of businesses.

"In Temple Quarter, we will harness the advantages of quantum and other emergent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, human computer interaction and novel computing architectures and their positive applications to real world scenarios.”