Quantum and Food Seminar Series
As part of seed funding awarded by the Quantum Technologies Alliance for Research Challenges (Quantum ARC) and the Scottish Alliance for Food (SCAF), we invite you to a seminar series aimed at fostering exciting collaborations to improve Scotland’s food security through novel applications of quantum technologies.
Each seminar features two talks, providing high level overviews of quantum technologies and a food production system (aquaculture on 24th April and vertical growing on 1st May), as well as time for a break-out discussion and networking session.
Seminar 1: An Introduction to Quantum Sensing & Aquaculture
Speakers: Dr Brian Patton (University of Strathclyde) and Professor Trevor Telfer (University of Stirling)
Date & time: Friday 24th April 2026, 12:00-13:00
Seminar 2: An Introduction to Vertical Growing and Applications of Single Photon Counting Techniques
Speakers: Dr Martina Pičmanová (The James Hutton Institute), Dr Michael Tanner (Heriot-Watt University), Dr Ashley Lyons (Univeristy of Glasgow/Quantum ARC), and Dr Aurora Maccarone (Heriot-Watt University)
Date & Time: Friday 1st May 2026, 12:00-13:00
These seminars are planned as a preface to two workshops hosted at the University of Stirling. The workshops are for the exploration and development of collaborative projects and will involve tours of the food production research facilities. They will also be used to identify possible pilot experiments to take place over the summer. There will also be a follow-on proposal development writing retreat later in the year.
The pre-workshop online primer seminars will draw on expertise from both research Alliances the seminars will provide a high-level, introductory overview of both quantum sensing and its current applications along with the current state-of-the-art in aquaculture and vertical farming. As such, they will be ideal starting points for researchers looking to understand the potential for collaboration between these historically separate fields of research.
We hope these presentations will enable a useful exchange of ideas between researchers and stoke some interesting discussion in the seminars themselves and the following workshops at Stirling on 28th May 2026 and 10th June 2026. More details on these to follow.
Quantum-alliance@glasgow.ac.uk 