A new expert network which helps organisations safely manage and share sensitive data has been launched.

The UK Anonymisation Network (UKAN) will advise organisations and companies on how to minimise the risk that personal details of individual people are inadvertently revealed when data are used to create valuable services.

It was initiated and funded by the UK Information Commissioner, supported by the University of Southampton, The University of Manchester, the Open Data Institute and the Office for National Statistics.

The network aims to establish best practice in anonymisation and offer practical advice and information to anyone who handles personal data and needs to share it. This is particularly relevant in sectors such as health, education and policing.

It will advise on technological issues, issues relating to the Freedom of Information Act and how researchers can access sensitive data.

Its core membership of experienced professional information managers and leading privacy researchers will help provide case studies and examples of best practice.

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, of the University of Southampton and Chairman and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, said: “If we are to harness the power of open data to support innovative services, increase accountability and empower citizens, we will need to ensure trust is retained.

“If data is available online, then the public must be confident that citizens' personal details will remain concealed.”

The Network will help organisations deliver the Government’s Transparency Initiative, which promotes greater openness of Government departments, public bodies, companies and other institutions.

It is led by Dr Mark Elliot, based at The University of Manchester.

Dr Elliot said: “Because technology is rapidly changing, and because so many more organisations collect data nowadays, information privacy is one of the big issues facing society."

“There are many positive things associated with these changes but things can go wrong, so we must ensure they happen in the right way and effective anonymisation is a vital part of that.”

Christopher Graham, UK Information Commissioner, said: “If correctly deployed, anonymised data can have important benefits - aiding privacy by design, increasing the transparency of government and supporting the UK’s widely regarded research community. It is vital that existing and emerging data protection risks are properly assessed by data controllers who wish to anonymise data. The work of UKAN will help build on the recommendations laid down in the ICO’s data protection code of practice on managing the risks related to anonymisation which we published last year. The network will also provide important best practice advice on how data can be successfully anonymised in compliance with the UK Data Protection Act.”

The University of Southampton is pleased to announce a new scholarship partnership with Sagentia, the leading global research and development consultancy.

The new partnership will provide generous bursaries totalling £25,000 to science and engineering students, including students in Electronics and Computer Science and in Physics and Astronomy.

Sagentia, which undertakes innovation, technology and product development work globally on behalf of leading organisations and start-ups in the medical, industrial and consumer products sectors, is offering 10 bursaries of £2,500 to support science and engineering students during the academic year starting September 2013.

Eligible students will be currently studying or have accepted a place on a range of science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) courses at the University of Southampton. Eligible courses include Chemistry, Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Product Design, or similar.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean of Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, says: “We are delighted and very proud that Sagentia has chosen Southampton to be a partner in its new scholarship scheme. As a global leader in technology development and consultancy, Sagentia recognises the importance of the high-quality undergraduate education provided by the University of Southampton, and the scholarships and internship opportunities will be a great incentive to our students, as well as a great boost to the development of the UK's expertise in science and engineering.”

Sagentia’s STEM Bursary Scheme is a new initiative, which aims to support the development of science and engineering skills in the UK. Dan Edwards, Managing Director at Sagentia, comments: “Sagentia has a strong track record of providing exciting career opportunities to talented STEM students, who join us in applying cutting edge scientific and engineering thinking with the world’s most innovative and successful businesses. The company is launching the Sagentia STEM Bursary Scheme to help financially support the brightest prospects in the next generation of innovators as a key component of Sagentia’s graduate programme and focus on innovation.”

Deadline for entries is 16 September and more information is available on the Sagentia website.

StartUp weekends are popular events in ECS and now our students are helping bring them to the rest of the world!

Over 60 people took part in a Global Startup Weekend, held from Friday 5 to Sunday 7 July at Ljubljana, Slovenia. ECS student Izidor Flajsman was one of the lead organizers and helped provide an intensive and fun weekend full of innovation, disruption and creativity where techies, designers and business individuals gathered to build a StartUp in less than 54 hours!

ECS and the University were main sponsors of the event and many members of the Slovenian business community were on hand to provide support, judging, and encouragement during the event. ECS student Alejandro Saucedo of HackaSoton also provided support over the weekend.

Videos from the event are available here: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnRRHcd9YI3lDsZ4sK8SXw?feature=watch

‘It was an epic event,’ said Izidor. ‘We had to close registration two days before the event and there were over 130 people at the final presentations. The biggest financial newspaper in Slovenia published a major double-page spread about Startup Weekends and now everyone knows about the University of Southampton!’

After the success of this event, we now look forward to the next StartUp Weekend in Timisoara, Romania, in August, organized by ECS student Vlad Velici.

ECS students are supported in these endeavours by the ECS Student Development Fund, provided by the generosity of ECS alumni.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall will this week (Friday 12 July) receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Sussex.

Dame Wendy, Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Southampton, will receive the degree in recognition of her contributions to computing and information technology. The citation recognizes her contribution to multimedia and hypermedia and the influence of her work on the development of the Semantic Web. It also highlights her role as a strong and vocal advocate for women’s opportunities in science, engineering and technology. It continues: “In her research and public life she has sought to ensure that women, as well as men, benefit from technological advancement and employment opportunities within a technical field.”

Earlier this year Dame Wendy received an Honorary Doctorate from City University London. Professor Paul Curran, Vice-Chancellor, commented: “"Professor Dame Wendy Hall has helped to transform the boundaries and capabilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

“Though she has spent most of her academic life at the University of Southampton, we can justly claim her as one of ours: she earned her Master's degree at City."

Professor Ken Grattan, Dean of the City Graduate School who nominated Dame Wendy Hall for the award, said: "Dame Wendy Hall has truly influenced the world as we know it today. Her ground-breaking work in the 1980s helped to give birth to the World Wide Web […] She is also particularly prominent as a strong and vocal advocate for women's opportunities in science, engineering and technology (SET). We are extremely proud that she is a distinguished alumna of City."

Dame Wendy has honorary degrees from universities including Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia; Aristotle University, Thessaloniki; Queen’s University, Belfast; and the Universities of of Loughborough; Glasgow, and Birmingham.

Using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.

Coined as the ‘Superman’ memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared to the “memory crystals” used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz, which is able to store vast quantities of data for over a million years. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures.

A 300 kb digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded in 5D using ultrafast laser, producing extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).

The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses. The research is led by Jingyu Zhang from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) and conducted under a joint project with Eindhoven University of Technology.

“We are developing a very stable and safe form of portable memory using glass, which could be highly useful for organisations with big archives. At the moment companies have to back up their archives every five to ten years because hard-drive memory has a relatively short lifespan,” says Jingyu.

“Museums who want to preserve information or places like the national archives where they have huge numbers of documents, would really benefit.”

The Physical Optics group from the ORC presented their ground-breaking paper at the photonics industry's renowned Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO’13) in San Jose. The paper, ‘5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Nanostructuring in Glass’ was presented by the during CLEO's prestigious post deadline session.

This work was done in the framework of EU project, Femtoprint.

Professor Peter Kazansky, the ORC’s group supervisor, adds: “It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race. This technology can secure the last evidence of civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

The team are now looking for industry partners to commercialise this ground-breaking new technology.

Undergraduate students in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) are embarking on ambitious activities across the globe this summer with generous support from ECS alumni.

The donations from alumni to the ECS Head of School Fund are enabling students to follow their interests across a wide range of activities. Grants from the Fund were open to application from all undergraduate students, and were awarded on the criteria of activities that are charitable or educational, that advance personal development, or will be of value to ECS, the University and the broader community.

As a result of the funding support Electronic Engineering student Marc De Vos was able to attend the Smart Textiles Salon in Belgium to present the results of his third-year project: a novel prototype digital watch printed on fabric. Other students received funding to attend the IEEE Central Europe Student Branch Congress in Opole, Poland; the Internet Engineering Task Force in Berlin; and the Debian Conference at Vaumarcus, Switzerland.

Electrical Engineering students Charles Phillips and Jarrod Zancanella are currently in Cameroon working with the University’s Cameroon Catalyst project to provide sustainable solar power energy generation to relieve the remote village of Bambouti from the constant use of generators. Computer Science student Ruxandra Geana will be taking part in the Study China Programme and spending four weeks at the East China Normal University in Shanghai to absorb the culture and development of China.

A newly-formed group which brings together students from all the University’s Engineering departments received start-up funding. The Southampton Projects Group is a new society which aims to take forward to completion projects that have been developed in the academic programme but which require funding and collaborative approaches to ensure their realization.

StartUp Weekends are a major element in this year’s funding requests. The events have been very popular in ECS since they first took place two years ago. Alejandro Saucedo, second-year Computer Science student received funding for a very successful event held in ECS in May, and over the summer ECS students are taking StartUp Weekends to their home countries. Izidor Flajsman organized a lively sell-out event in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Vlad Velici will be running a StartUp Weekend in Timisoara, Romania, at the end of August. Robin Johnson received support to help him take part in the SUSU Theatre Group production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, ‘Hanging Bruce-Howard’, and Luke O’Brien, who was one of the founders of the very popular online student newspaper, The Soton Tab, received funding for further development of the Tab by the DevECS team.

Funding for summer internships was also provided for students to take part in the GlacsWeb project which is investigating the effects of climate change on glaciers using pervasive sensing, and to provide development work for next year’s round of Student Robotics, the ECS-led group which organizes a six-month robotics challenge for sixth-form schools and colleges.

Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, commented: “These are fantastic opportunities for our students, and I wish them the best of luck with their different endeavours. We are grateful to ECS alumni for enabling our students to pursue these challenges. In their grant applications our students stressed that financial support of this kind was fundamental to their ability to undertake these ambitious and often life-changing activities."

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