Preliminary Recommendations

Establish reciprocal access arrangements to flagship platforms — Italy’s Leonardo and the emerging IT4LIA AI Factory, and UK resources including the AI Research Resource and EPCC’s incoming national supercomputer — alongside quantum testbeds such as the NQCC and CINECA’s hybrid quantum–HPC systems. Reciprocal access lowers the cost of ambitious joint work and makes the partnership tangible for researchers.

Fund a small number of co-branded demonstrator testbeds in priority sectors — health, energy, and security — where both countries have complementary strengths. Testbeds should target the convergence of the three technologies rather than isolated niches, and be designed to produce shared benchmarks, reusable tooling, and a pipeline of joint publications and spin-outs.

Build on the Trustworthy AI Visiting Researcher Programme by extending cognate short-stay mobility schemes into quantum and HPC, potentially with NQSTI and ICSC as Italian counterparts. Expand GREAT Scholarships and Royal Society–CNR cost-share grants with larger budgets and explicit AI/QT/HPC themes to rebuild the early-career pipeline at marginal cost.

Introduce synchronised seed funding to help binational teams form and position for larger Horizon Europe and national calls. Aligning the timing of UK and Italian calls, and providing modest pump-priming grants, would allow competitive consortia to assemble within the same funding window — directly addressing the funding-misalignment barrier.

Create a lightweight joint steering group under the UK–Italy Science and Technology Dialogue to set 2–3-year priorities, coordinate instruments, and monitor delivery against clear milestones. This provides the connective tissue to keep momentum between summits and ensures the recommendations translate into measurable outcomes.