Photonics is one of the most penetrating technologies of the 21st century with impact in such diverse areas as information processing and communications, sensing and security, healthcare and medicine, and quantum technology among others. Its role in the future is only expected to rise, providing novel disruptive solutions needed for various industries. Recent advances in photonics were enabled by our ability to engineer controlled light-matter interactions either by shaping materials (nanoparticles, resonators, waveguides, photonic crystals, metamaterials) or controlling light beam properties (subwavelength focusing, polarisation and optical angular momentum, ultrashort pulses). This approach has allowed to open completely new applications for photonics where the impact in modern technologies is highest. In ICT, photonic integrated circuitry, all-optical routing in transparent networks, all-optical switching and modulation at higher speeds and lower power consumption, new approaches for information encoding, such as OAM, are the driving force. In healthcare and security, advanced sensing based on nanophotonic structures provides label-free sensitivities down to molecular level, real-time sensing and used for cancer diagnostic, drug development, and DNA sequencing to name but a few. Complex, structured optical beams have unique properties offering new degrees of freedom for achieving unusual functions demanded in microscopy, optical trapping and manipulation of nano-objects, information encoding in optical communications, holography, quantum technologies and laser micromachining. Metasurfaces, a subwavelength-thin nanostructured films, which were initially developed for controlling the phase of light and its reflection and transmission beyond the Snell’s law, provide a rich playground for generation and manipulation of structured beams. iCOMM project aims to establish a metasurface platform for generating and controlling complex vector beams in space and time and develop its applications in sensing and identification of chiral objects and nonlinear optical trapping. Using unique optical properties of designer-metasurfaces capable of controlling both phase and amplitude of light, nonlinear interactions of pulsed vector beams are optimised and explored. This will be a transformative development for the applications of complex optical beams and metasurfaces in optical communications, displays, security and bio- and chemical sensing and metrology. The realisation of active metasurface chips for nonlinear generation, transformation and manipulation of pulsed vector beams will also be a transformative development for their other application in classical and quantum optical information communications and processing, metrology and high-resolution microscopy. The success of the project will transform the areas of both complex optical beams and metasurfaces by introducing real-time active control and consolidate and enhance the European leadership in this field.