Professor Neil White

Head of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science

Professor Neil White claims that he is leading "the most exciting" university department in the UK.

Neil became Head of ECS - Electronics and Computer Science in March 2011.

"ECS is particularly exciting at the moment as it has become part of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences; this is a strong faculty," he said.

Neil believes that the Faculty is well placed to tackle the key challenges in computer science and electronics. He also acknowledges the broader economic situation in which there is less research funding, an ever-changing student environment, a new tuition fee structure and the challenge to continue to attract international students to come to study in the UK.

Neil’s vision is very much tied into global challenge rather than uncertainties.

“Despite all the challenges, there still needs to be a place for development and new ideas, he said. “We don’t want to lose that incentive to grow new areas in research and education.

He is also keen to maintain the “ECS-ness” of his academic unit. He is very proud of ECS, which was recently restructured to form seven research groups to meet current challenges in computing and electronics. The groupings are: Electronic and Software Systems; Electronics and Electrical Engineering; Agents, Interaction and Complexity; Communications Signal Processing and Control; The Nano Group; Web and Internet Science, and IT Innovation.

“ECS is very collegiate and people work together in all aspects of their daily lives,” he said. “The people are good and the facilities are exceptional and if we concentrate on the areas that we are really good at, then we create quite an impact on all aspects of society.”

Although certainly ambitious and very focused, Neil did not necessarily aspire to leading such a large academic group. When earlier this year, he was faced with the decision of leading ECS or going deeper into his research, his wife said to him that the answer was clear, he “had to lead the best department in the country”.

From as far back as he can remember Neil enjoyed maths and physics, so it is hardly surprising that he was attracted to electronics. He studied a degree in Electronic Engineering during which time he came into contact with sensors for weighing materials such as wool, coal, wheat and various powders during his industrial placement period at a small process engineering company in the Midlands.

Neil came to the University of Southampton in 1985, where he decided to develop his knowledge of sensors further and studied for a PhD in thick film piezoresistive (strain gauge) sensors. After completing his PhD in 1988, he worked as a research fellow at University of Southampton Institute of Transducer Technology (USITT) where he developed a number of different transducers, including one of the first types of thick-film pressure sensor for automotive applications.

His career led him to go on to become a Lecturer at the University of Southampton in 1990, a Senior Lecturer in 1999, a Reader in 2000 and the Professor of Intelligent Sensor Systems at ECS.

Over the years, he became increasingly interested in new materials for sensor applications and in 1991, he developed a thick film piezoelectric material, which has been used in a variety of different applications and has enabled the realisation of sensors that can power themselves when installed in situations where ambient vibrations occur.

He commented: “We began to understand how the material worked and found that it would work best if you have a sensor buried in a device that you cannot easily access. The ideal scenario is to have a device that will generate power from a vibration source, which will in turn power the sensor.”

The sensors were also idea for use in medical applications such as the Southampton Hand, which his group developed in 2005. The ‘hand’ has both piezoresistive and piezoelectric sensors in each of the five fingertips and detects how much force is being exerted on the fingertip.

Further research into alternative energy sources based on electromagnetic techniques and a desire to find applications for them led to the creation of Perpetuum Ltd., a University spin-out company, of which Neil is a founder member.

He commented: “We set up Perpetuum to exploit the work we had done in energy harvesting.’ Perpetuum researchers have developed small, inexpensive wireless sensor systems with RF data transmission. The patented vibration harvesting microgenerator produces sufficient energy from relatively low levels of vibration to power the systems so they require no external power supplies or batteries.”

Neil and his team of researchers saw many potential applications for these sensor systems at the time. These could be used to monitor stress and find dangerous fractures by being embedded in structures such as bridges and aircraft, or monitor the health of rotating parts and moving vehicles.

The biggest market since has been in the oil and gas industry where Perpetuum has developed devices to monitor equipment in industrial plants. More recently, they have investigated the potential for having such sensors in railway goods carriages.

Their challenge at the moment is to continue to work on making these sensors smaller and more compact so that they are suitable to be worn by humans.

“At the moment, in order to generate sufficient power from human movement, the sensors need to be big and heavy. Whether it is feasible to make them more compact is an interesting academic challenge,” he said.

In the meantime, Neil is involved in research which uses sensor networks to help people recover from strokes.

“These are body-mounted sensors and the challenge is to establish the minimum number that can be mounted to be effective, as a patient wouldn’t cope well with lots of sensors.”

Neil has a positive attitude about his future research and leadership challenges.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said. “We must have a strategy that matches global demand and addresses the issues such as healthcare and security, that affect people’s lives,” he said. “ECS will stay at the forefront of these global challenges.”