PICC aims to identify tools for controlling ion crystal as their size is scaled up, develop strategies for implementing quantum dynamics of mesoscopic ion Coulomb crystals in a noisy environment and explore the capability of ion Coulomb crystals as quantum simulators. The targeted breakthrough is a ten fold increase in the number of entangled ions available for quantum operation operations. The long-term vision underlying this proposal is to engineer quantum correlations and entanglement in ion Coulomb crystals in order to exploit them for technological purposes of different kinds.