Researchers in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton have launched new software which allows organisations to develop evacuation plans using a combination of crowdsourcing and computer simulations.

Dr Sarvapali Ramchurn and a team of researchers in the ECS Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group have devised CollabMap and are now inviting organizations to volunteer information about connections to buildings and roads in their area, so that an evacuation plan can be created for them.

"CollabMap will be of interest to any organization that wants to develop an evacuation plan," said Dr Ramchurn. "We don't just use the information to build a map; we build a computer simulation that shows how people move around an area. Once people log in and draw routes, we aggregate the data to produce a high fidelity map over which we can simulate the movement of thousands of individuals across roads and open spaces, using parallel programming techniques."

CollabMap follows on from crowdsourcing and computer simulation work undertaken by Dr Ramchurn for Hampshire County Council with funding from EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and the ORCHID project. ORCHID focuses on capitalising on human/computer interactions in disaster response scenarios.

One of the areas that will be mapped using CollabMap is the Fawley Oil Depot, near Southampton, which is the second biggest oil depot in the world and an area of high risk. Members of the public can take part in the CollabMap exercise, whether they know the area or not. Dr Ramchurn explains how it works on the CollabMap video on YouTube.

The Fawley mapping exercise will run for two months. Similar exercises can be run in any part of the world and can be used by organisations interested in their data being used for evacuation simulations.

The researchers involved in CollabMap are: Dr Ruben Stranders, Dr Trung Dong Huynh, and Dr Bing Shi.

For further information about this news story, contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453

Prestigious prizes for Best Open-Source Software were awarded to ECS researchers Dr Jonathon Hare and Dr Sina Samangooei at the ACM Multimedia 2011 conference, held this month in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Dr Hare and Dr Samangooei, of the Web and Internet Science research group in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, presented two open-source packages in the competition, both of which were developed in the University. OpenIMAJ and Image Terrier beat the other 26 entries, and Dr Samangooei was awarded the Social Media Award for his enthusiastic use of Twitter throughout the Conference event!

OpenIMAJ is a general-purpose multimedia content analysis library written in the Java programming language. It is the result of a number of past and present research projects within ECS and contains state-of-the-art analysis algorithms and techniques developed by the Southampton team.

ImageTerrier is a scalable content-based image retrieval system, built on top of the Terrier text retrieval testbed, developed by the University of Glasgow. It is possible, using OpenIMAJ and ImageTerrier, to create retrieval systems akin to Google Goggles.

The current development of the software is funded by the European Union under the FP7 projects LivingKnowledge and ARCOMEM, together with the LiveMemories project funded by the Autonomous Province of Trentino.

This work has been supervised over recent years by Professor Paul Lewis and Dr Kirk Martinez of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science.

ECS student Adam Malpass was invited to London last week to represent the brightest talent among the UK's electronics students.

Adam, who is in the final year of his MEng degree in Electronic Engineering at Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, met the UK's Business Minister Mark Prisk at the Electronics Showcase event held at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The two-week event showcased the best of British manufacturing in innovative, high-tech electronics, to highlight the expertise Britain has in this sector, and the contribution that electronics makes to the economy.

Adam was last month awarded the title of 'Scholar of the Year' by the UK Electronics Skills Foundation which promotes Electronics as a discipline in schools and universities and aims to provide a good supply of electronics skills for the sector in the future.

Business Minister Mark Prisk said:

“Electronics is involved in every part of the economy, from consumer goods to farming. It makes cars more reliable, aircraft safer and data movement faster.

“There is massive potential for growth in the sector and the UK is uniquely placed in Europe to take full advantage of that. We have 40% of the European market in electronics system design, nearly a third of Europe's silicon design companies and we are the home to Europe's largest concentration of electronics systems design houses.

“With all this expertise already here in Britain, it’s surprising that the public don’t necessarily know about it. That’s why we’re running programmes like our Make it in Great Britain campaign to dispel the myth that we don’t make anything in Britain anymore and inspire our young people to consider an exciting career in modern manufacturing.”

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The shortage of girls studying computer science is worse than ever before, says Professor Dame Wendy Hall, speaking in The Guardian today.

Despite huge efforts by the scientific community to address the issue over many years, Professor Hall told The Guardian that girls still perceive computing to be “for geeks”, and that this has proved a “cultural” obstacle, impossible to overcome.

One of the world’s leading computer scientists, Professor Hall has also played a prominent role in shaping science and technology policy across the globe, and the issue of female participation in computer science has been high on her agenda throughout her career. She was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton from 2002 to 2007, and is currently Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton.

In The Guardian article Professor Hall calls for computer science to be “given a buzz” to all pupils in primary schools, with the curriculum being reformed at secondary level. “Girls have been further put off by dumbing down computing to IT literacy,” she says. “They think that if they study computing they are going to become secretaries.”

Official figures show that in 2004 women made up 19 per cent of all students in undergraduate computer science degrees in the UK; by 2009, the figure had fallen to 16 per cent.

“Women and girls use technology as much if not more than boys and men do and it’s important that women are part of creating the future of this industry,” says Professor Hall.

The teaching of computer science in schools was also criticized by Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google at his MacTaggart Lecture during the Edinburgh Festival last year.

The careers prospects for computer science graduates from highly-rated courses (such as those offered in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton) continue to be excellent. ECS has one of the highest employment rates in the UK for its graduates, and the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences Careers Fair, on 7 February 2012, will be bigger than ever before, with 65 companies offering graduate roles and internships.

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See also: A new year challenge on programming ..., also in today's (10 January 2012) Guardian.

For further information on this story contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Professor D W Barron, who died in Southampton on 2 January 2012, was the first Professor of Computation in the University of Southampton, and the Foundation Professor of Computer Science.

David Barron began his academic career in Cambridge, where his initial research in the Cavendish Laboratory involved some of the earliest work in computer applications. In the early 1960s he worked with Ferranti on the Titan project, and led Cambridge efforts to develop the Titan Supervisor (a multi-programming operating system) and the Combined Programming Language (CPL). CPL broke new ground in language design and application generality, and led eventually to B and then C – one of the most widely used programming languages of all time.

Professor Barron joined Southampton’s Mathematics Department in 1967 as the first Professor of Computation, and he combined this for a number of years with the Directorship of the University’s Computing Services department. In 1986, having written many of the key texts which helped shape the then-emerging subject of Computer Science, he was appointed the first Professor of Computer Science in the University, marking the establishment of the Department of Electronics and Computer Science. He was Head of ECS from 1989 to 1994.

Professor Barron’s many books include influential texts on Recursive Programming, Assemblers and Loaders, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Pascal Implementation, Text Processing and Typesetting, and Scripting Languages. He was one of the founding editors of ‘Software – Practice and Experience’ and edited the journal for over 30 years from 1971. He also undertook pioneering work on radio wave propagation with Professor Henry Rishbeth, providing understanding of how radio waves were reflected at the ionospheric boundary.

His inaugural lecture, given 40 years ago in the University of Southampton, was entitled ‘The Computer, the University, and Society’, and extolled the benefits of computer programming as a discipline, in a way that has been echoed recently by governments and industry leaders (it also demonstrated his waspish sense of humour: “[C]omputer programming has all the educational benefits that were ever claimed for the study of Latin, and it is likely to come in useful, too.”

He concluded his lecture with a rousing and far-sighted statement of his belief in his subject which also provided a strong insight into his relish for his position as a university researcher and teacher: “If computers are to be used for good, then it is essential that everyone should understand what they are, and what they can do. Equally, those of us who are behind this technological revolution must gain a greater understanding of our tools, because out of understanding comes judgement. We are only witnessing the beginning of the changes in Society that the wide-scale use of computers will bring. The changes are not going to be comfortable, but it is the job of those of us in the University to ensure, by education and research, that they are not catastrophic. That is why I am in the game. And, to be honest, it is great fun, too.”

Professor Dame Wendy Hall has described David Barron as “one of the founding fathers of computer science as an academic discipline”, attributing to him the strong foundations of Computer Science at Southampton which enabled the consequent development of ECS.

Professor Barron’s funeral is at Southampton Crematorium at 14:45 on Friday 20 January. All friends and colleagues are welcome to attend. Memories and tributes to David can be left on our webpage: David Barron: In Memory and Celebration.

Some of the critical problems facing the world’s power systems will be discussed by Professor Alun Vaughan in his inaugural lecture on Wednesday 1 February.

Professor Vaughan, Head of the Electronics and Electrical Research Group in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, will look at the critical role that dielectrics – the materials used for insulation in the storage and transmission of electricity – play in high voltage systems, and will highlight the need for a step-change in materials technology to address such problems.

The lecture will move from reviewing the principles of self assembly that make polymers such a versatile class of materials, to looking at the strategies that are currently being used in the design of next-generation insulation systems and the problems that will need to be overcome if the ambitious targets being set for future plant are to be met.

Alun Vaughan joined the University of Southampton in 2000, having previously worked at the University of Reading’s Polymer Science Centre, and at the Central Electricity Research Laboratories of the Central Electricity Generating Board. His research on the use of polymers in power transmission has developed in different directions but his major research continues to focus on the linkage between the structure of polymeric materials and their properties. He is also involved in nanodielectrics and the developments of thermoplastic cable insulation systems based on polymer blends. He was appointed to a Professorship in the University of Southampton in 2007.

The lecture: “Living in a Materials World: Powering the future through designer dielectrics”, takes place at 5 pm on Wednesday 1 February, in Nightingale Lecture Theatre on the Highfield Campus. All are welcome and no tickets are required. Refreshments are available in the Nightingale Building from 4.30 pm.

The Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) system developed by Dr Kirk Martinez of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science along with Archaeology colleagues at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford has recently been deployed in The Louvre, Paris, to capture items from the Oriental artefacts department.

This new technology makes it possible to study the finer details of some of the world’s greatest historical artefacts. The systems take multiple pictures of artefacts with the light in 76 different positions, then create a new type of image (RTI), which enables the viewer to move the virtual light around the image to enhance surface detail.

This version of the system, 'Dome3', incorporates a new design with its own transit box. A custom-build camera mount makes Dome3 easier to construct. The RTI technology systems developed by the project will allow researchers to study documentary and other artefacts remotely in great detail without being restricted by fixed lighting angles. The result will be to ensure that high-quality digital versions of these materials can be consulted by scholars worldwide.

“Hewlett Packard Research Laboratories invented this technology a few years ago and it has been used sporadically around the world,” said Dr Martinez. “What we have done is develop the technology so that it is fast enough to be usable every day in a museum situation where you have lots of objects that need scanning." The RTI technology systems developed by the project will allow researchers to study documentary and other artefacts remotely in great detail without being restricted by fixed lighting angles. The result will be to ensure that high-quality digital versions of these materials can be consulted by scholars worldwide.

The technology has already been used in the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Ashmolean in Oxford. Having completed the work in The Louvre where it gathered around 40GB of data each day, Dome3 will now be taken to the United States, where it will remain permanently. It was built for the Mellon Foundation Funded-Imaging Campaign.

The earlier 12-month Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient Document Artefacts was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Digital Equipment and Database for Impact. The team members were: Dr Graeme Earl, Dr Kirk Martinez, Hembo Pagi, Leif Isaksen, PhD student Philip Basford, Michael Hodgson and Sascha Bischoff of the University of Southampton, and Professor Alan Bowman, Dr Charles Crowther, Dr Jacob Dahl and Dr Kathryn Piquette of the University of Oxford.

Philip Basford and Jacob Dahl are pictured here early in the morning, outside the Louvre in Paris.

Researchers from the University of Southampton will be collaborating with scientists from Masdar Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to tackle the MyHeartMap Challenge, using social network and crowdsourcing.

Launched today (Tuesday 31 January), by the University of Pennsylvania, MyHeartMap Challenge invites members of the public to participate by submitting geo-tagged pictures of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) they see around Philadelphia, to create an effective location database of AEDs.

Masdar Institute’s computer scientists Dr Iyad Rahwan and Sohan D’Souza and University of Southampton computational game theorists James McInerney, Dr Victor Naroditskiy and Professor Nick Jennings, will join MIT Professor Sandy Pentland and UCSD Research Scientist Dr Manuel Cebrian, aiming to solve the MyHeartMap Challenge – and they are inviting social networkers to be involved in the activity.

It is estimated that around 300,000 people die every year in the US from sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, some of which could be prevented through the timely use of a defibrillator. The University of Pennsylvania has observed that the inability to locate AEDs in such emergency situations greatly reduces their life-saving potential.

The team or individual that finds and photographs the most AEDs in Philadelphia County over the next six weeks will receive the grand prize of US$10,000. The competition has also flagged a number of ‘Golden AEDs’ - which have a US$50 bonus for the first team or individual who photographs and submits a Golden AED to the contest.

Dr Rahwan said: “Our team will use crowdsourcing to encourage people to report the location of AEDs, to verify other reports, and to recruit new participants. If we win, the money will be split among the participants who helped find defibrillators and the participants who recruited them.

Crowdsourcing provides an unprecedented ability to accomplish information-gathering tasks that require the involvement of a large number of people, often at geographically-spread locations. The success of a task relies on the ability to identify trustworthy information reports, while false reports are bound to appear either due to honest mistakes or sabotage attempts. This information verification problem is a difficult task, which, just like the information-gathering task, requires the involvement of a large number of people. Our team develops methods for solving this problem through crowdsourcing: we crowdsource not just for gathering, but also for verification of information."

Dr Rahwan recently co-authored a paper with the DARPA Network Challenge winners on their use of social networks to mobilize people to contribute to their team’s efforts. The paper was recently published in the prestigious Science journal.

Dr Naroditskiy said: “When your goal is to find as many AEDs within as large an area as possible, it would seem obvious that the best way to do that is to involve as many people in the search as possible. That’s what our team is trying to achieve through our expertise in social networking, mobilization and technology.”

The team will use the challenge to test some of their theoretical research on social network mobilization and incentivisation as well as verification, which adds a new layer of complexity not yet seen in crowdsourcing challenges.

Dr Cebrian said: “To most people social networks are just a way to talk to their friends or share videos. But to scientists like us, they represent a unique way to form large teams of people to work in a coordinated way to achieve difficult tasks. If we can harness that power of social networks, then we can enlist countless numbers of helpful volunteers to canvass Philadelphia and seek out and verify the AEDs that are currently not geo-tagged or on any map. This information can later prove to be lifesaving for someone going through sudden cardiac arrest.”

The team has launched its own website to attract team recruits who will help identify as many AEDs as possible. Visit http://scailab.media.mit.edu/heartcrowd to find out how you can be involved.

The MyHeartMap Challenge was launched on 31 January and will run through March 13.

For further information on this news story, contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Sixty-six of the UK’s leading technology graduate recruiters will be attending the Engineering and Technology Careers Fair organized by ECS-Electronics and Computer Science and the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton on Tuesday 7 February.

Despite the economic downturn, and the current bleak news about graduate recruitment, highly skilled and capable graduates are still very much in demand, and Southampton students have a very strong reputation for the breadth and depth of their knowledge of different technologies, as well as for the strong mix of practical and theoretical understanding gained in their degree programmes.

This year’s Fair, the fifth in the series, is 25 per cent larger than last year’s. Companies attending will be offering graduate recruitment opportunities, as well as summer internships and industrial placements, and aiming to build relationships with students as they progress through their degrees. Many of the companies also sponsor student activities in ECS, provide prizes and awards for academic course modules, and pay regular visits to give technology presentations.

Imagination Technologies, one of the country’s leading technology companies, is a regular recruiter of ECS graduates, whose skills and knowledge fit well with the company’s needs. Its multimedia and communications semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) cores are at the heart of today's most innovative and exciting consumer electronics products and the company relies on recruiting leading graduates.

“We believe it is critical for industry and universities to work together to mutually benefit,” says Raeeka Yassaie of Imagination Technologies. “As a company we are represented on the Industrial Liaison Board in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science. This helps us maintain a strong understanding of the teaching ECS delivers and we are also able to advise and influence so that the School can ensure it is producing graduates with the skills that industry needs.

“We attend and sponsor many events each year across UK universities with strong engineering and computing departments, including sponsorship of multiple events and attendance at a number of careers-focused activities in Southampton for ECS."

ECS has one of the UK’s best records for the employability of its graduates. In last year’s University league tables, Southampton's Electronics and Electrical Engineering employability ranking (indicating the percentage of students in graduate jobs or further training six months after graduation) was 97 per cent - the highest in the subject table.

“It’s essential that we produce graduates who have the skills and understanding to play an effective role in developing future technologies,” says Professor Neil White, Head of Electronics and Computer Science. “As a school we have worked hard over recent years to ensure that our courses are providing our students with the skills needed in the workplace. We also place a very high value on our employer liaison activity, including our annual Careers Fair and our Careers Hub web site.

“This enables students to work closely with companies who can sponsor projects and course modules, to take up summer internships and work placements in vacations, and to have the best possible information about employment opportunities.”

Over 1000 students attended last year's event, and so this year's Fair is already hotly anticipated. The event takes place in the Garden Court, Students' Union, on the Highfield Campus, from 10.45 am to 3.00 pm on Tuesday 7 February, and is open to all students in the University, with a particular emphasis on engineering and technology degrees.

This year’s Fair is sponsored by the IET – The Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the Fair helpers are sponsored by Snowflake Software, a local Southampton company.

The Fair brochure with a list of companies attending is here: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/careers/resources/careers_fair_brochure.pdf

For further information about the Careers Fair or careers activity in the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences, contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.