UKRI-India Future networks initiative

Parent Grant: UEA EP/W016524/1 Child Grants :- Surrey- Tafazolli- EP/W016540/1 UCL- Hailes- EP/W016699/1 Southampton- Hanzo - EP/W016605/1 1. Background Context This is a request for a costed extension to the above grants from the current end date of 31st July 2024 until 31st March 2025 to cover the staff time of Parr (PI), Co-PIs (Hanzo, Tafazolli and Hailes) and to extend the existing PDRA over the period. This will enable our team to leverage the work, profile and partnerships we have developed to-date as part of our EPSRC UK-India Future Networks Initiative in order to support the development of a longer-term joint initiative for Sustainable and Resilient Future UK-India Networks research and innovation. In this extension period, the funding is requested for the PI (Parr) and Co-PIs (Hailes, Tafazolli, Hanzo) and existing PDRA, will allow us to continue our programme of activities and also take account of new and evolving priorities from both UK and Indian governments as well as the Telecoms industry linked to their strategies for Future Telecoms research. We will also take account of updates due to the changing dynamics of Trusted Research, RRI and national security as a consequence of world events. The vision for the extension period is to maintain the momentum we have built up and achieved to further bolster collaborations between UK and India in the domain of Future Networks. We also want to leverage the growing reputation and visibility our UKI-FNI project has gained from key government agencies such as Govt of India Department of Science & Technology (DST), Innovate UK, EPSRC and DSIT as well as other agencies such as Govt of India Department of Telecommunications. In this extension period, we will leverage any remaining consumables funding we have from our existing project to support Visiting Researchers between UK and India, in particular ECRs and PhD students, Joint UKI-FNI Industry Sandpits, Joint workshops, small challenge projects and further development of our extensive Roadmap Report. In particular, we are aiming to organise a Hothouse at BT Adastral Park where we will support EPSRC CDT students, PDRAs and ECRs to come together to discuss research challenge areas for Future Networks. Through our collaborations and engagement with the Telcom Industry, in particular BT, AWS Telecom and Ericsson, we also want to promote ED&I in support of the skills pipeline required for the next generation of Network Engineers and Network Research Scientists required to design, deploy, monitor, maintain and manage the Networks of the Future in both countries. We will also leverage the findings of the recent UKI-FNI Workshop we organised on TN-NTN Integration at Surrey 6GIC in collaboration with the Satellite Applications Catapult. This workshop had important participation from a wide portfolio of Indian academic, industrial and government partners. In order to support wider EPSRC International Strategy, we will also reach out to the recently funded Telecoms Hubs (e.g., TITAN, CHEDDAR, JOINER) as well as the recently announced EPSRC CDTs in the ICT domain. In addition, we will further explore the role of Future Networks in support of Digital Transformation strategies of large organisations (commercial and government) by linking with key EPSRC Next Stage DE Centres such as DIGIT-Lab in which Parr is a Co-PI. We will also work closely with the DSIT Telecoms Team on the development of their international Strategy for Future Networks Research & Innovation with India.