Cyber security experts from the University of Southampton have joined forces with the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) to tackle the evolving use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activities.

Over 200 representatives from law enforcement agencies, government and academia met for a cryptocurrency masterclass at Southampton Science Park's AXIS Conference Centre in a formal launch of the partnership with the Cyber Security Academy.

Virtual currencies are being used in increasing quantities on domains such as the dark web, requiring new approaches and legislation to be enacted by police authorities. The cryptocurrency masterclass drew upon best practice and expertise from a range of speakers to prepare attendees for this new challenge.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of the Cyber Security Academy, said: "It is important that academia and law enforcement agencies come together to apply the latest outcomes from the UK's research and innovation. I am delighted to have formally launched this partnership with SEROCU which I hope will make a difference in police's increasingly challenging and complex criminal investigations in this arena."

SEROCU is a police unit delivering a cohesive regional response to serious organised crime within the boundaries of Hampshire Constabulary, Thames Valley Police, Surrey Police and Sussex Police.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jess Wadsworth, Head of SEROCU, and Professor Mark Spearing, President and Vice-Chancellor (interim) at Southampton, delivered keynote speeches applauding the formation of the new partnership at the recent masterclass.

Dr Federico Lombardi, a Lecturer in Cyber Security, also delivered a presentation on Cyber Range for Blockchain Platforms, building upon findings of a Group Design Project recently carried out under his supervision by Electronics and Computer Science students.

Attendees at the all-day event included representatives from local police authorities, the National Crime Agency and British Transport Police.

Sarah Martin, Cyber Security Academy Collaboration Manager, added: "This new partnership is an exciting opportunity to build on our previous cyber crime symposiums, to host regular annual events with different themes between law enforcement and cyber security."

The University of Southampton will be part of a new consortium confronting emerging cyber security challenges in the UK.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of Southampton's Cyber Security Academy, will be part of the new Security, Privacy, Identity and Trust Engagement Network (SPRITE+) which will launch this September.

SPRITE+ will harness outstanding UK research expertise in security, privacy, identity and trust over the next four years as it addresses priority challenges set by academic, business and industry, government and civil stakeholders.

The network, which will be led by the University of Manchester, has been awarded £1.7 million funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The University of Southampton is building the next generation of cyber security leaders through MEng in Computer Science with Cyber Security and MSc in Cyber Security degree programmes. The SPRITE+ network will create new opportunities for summer, final year and PhD projects plus partnerships with industry that will enhance this learning experience.

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A primary school girl's innovative idea to help her dad with a hearing impairment has inspired an engineering team at the University of Southampton to build and demonstrate a 'Super Hearing Dish'.

Isabelle Radley, a Year 4 pupil from Wonersh and Shamley Green CofE Primary School in Surrey, proposed the invention as part of a national scheme that encourages children to imagine engineering solutions for the world's problems.

Her sketched 'super hearing set' was selected to be prototyped from many entries to the Primary Engineer Leaders Award in the South of England. Experts at Southampton's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) in the School of Engineering and the Public Engagement with Research Unit based their device on her vision and demonstrated it to her and dad, Matt, for the first time at this month's Science and Engineering Day.

"I designed the Super Hearing Set to help people who are hard of hearing listen to only one person in a room," Isabelle says. "My dad doesn't like it when everyone speaks at the same time because he can't hear what's being said. It is really exciting to have my design built and I hope that other people will be able to use it to help them in real life."

Professor of Hearing Science and Technology Dr Stefan Bleeck teamed up with MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering student Raphael Chung Chi Hang to develop the hearing dish, which receives and processes audio from a microphone mounted on a parabolic dish.

The Super Hearing Dish incorporates Stefan's experience working with real time processing of sound using a Raspberry Pi. "The microphone mounted on the dish can be pointed to a particular direction to gather sound from just that direction," he explains. "Noise from other directions is received at a much lower level, enabling the user to follow a conversation or follow a particular person's speech more easily.

"Real time audio processing on this unit can then also be relayed to users wearing closed headphones to experience what they would hear if they have a hearing impairment and compare this with using a hearing aid or cochlear implant."

Stefan and his team will now produce several further versions which they intend to use in teaching and outreach.

Third year student Raphael designed and built the Super Hearing Dish as part of the Excel Southampton Internship Programme and led the coding of the Raspberry Pi unit.

"Having chosen the internship project to develop my skills and also enjoyed some outreach work with children, I was pleased to be able to talk to Isabelle and her class at her primary school," he says. "The children asked some interesting questions and made suggestions, having just learned about ears and hearing. Each year many schools promote engineering through the Primary Engineer Leaders Award and classes enjoy meeting a range of engineers."

Southampton student engineers also developed the Primary Engineer Leaders Award southern region prototype in 2017-18, when a group of final year Mechanical Engineering students created a Fun Noisy Rubbish Bin. The interactive bin speaks to children to encourage them to recycle and includes responsive eyes and a robotic mouth. The mouth only opens for waste items which are suitable for recycling and tells the child fun facts about how such materials are re-used.

A display of selected concepts entered for the 2019 Primary Engineer Leaders Award will accompany the School of Engineering Design Show, which will open on Thursday 13th June. It is hoped that further projects will follow, showcasing Southampton's support for the Award's motto 'engineers inspiring children inspiring engineers'.

University of Southampton student Dominika Woszczyk impressed in the final of Bright SCIdea Challenge 2019 with her pitch for an AI assistant to support young people's mental health.

The aspiring entrepreneur, who has nurtured multiple startup ideas during her MSc Artificial Intelligence (AI) degree, presented to a panel of expert judges in the national competition that brings together the brightest young business minds to pitch science-based innovations.

Dominika and team members from the Universities of Bristol and Edinburgh were one of five shortlisted entries in the final at the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) in central London on Tuesday.

They combined their collective experience to pitch BesideYou, an application for students and young adults that would offer a personalised programme to cultivate better mental health with support from an AI chatbot as a 'journey buddy'.

"My MSc's Deep Learning and Advanced Machine Learning modules inspired me to think how current commercial chatbots and apps could be improved and applied to help people," Dominika says. "We started with the idea for an AI therapist for teenagers and this approach then evolved as we developed a business plan. We are so happy to have reached the final as we know a lot of the other competitors who had some very impressive ideas."

The Bright SCIdea Challenge supports participants in business planning and pitch training, and offers valuable networking opportunities within the commercial scientific community. The annual competition, which is sponsored by Synthomer and INEOS, rewards winners with a £5,000 prize.

Dominika spearheaded the BesideYou entry, approaching MSc Artificial Intelligence student Raffaele Piccini from the University of Edinburgh and BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering student Diane Remmy from the University of Bristol to unite for the contest.

"We want to give people experiencing mental health problems the opportunity to get support for free and anytime," Dominika says. "We differentiate ourselves by providing a journey buddy that you can talk to using a contextual chatbot, motivating you along your personalised plan and rewarding you when you reach milestones."

Dominika was crowned the winner of the University's Future Worlds accelerator Startup Pitch Off in September with her vision for an AI language learning assistant and is hoping to pitch to investors in the Future Worlds Dragons' Den competition this May.

She is currently undertaking a 'chatbot for interactive storytelling' project within her MSc thesis and is planning to pursue a PhD related to natural language processing and speech recognition after her degree.

Researchers from the University of Southampton presented advances across a range of topics in engineering and physical sciences in the STEM for Britain showcase at the House of Commons.

Multidisciplinary research including particle pollution detection using artificial intelligence, electroplating for digital memories and light dynamic DNA-nanoparticle devices were taken to Parliament for the high profile exhibition during British Science Week.

Early career researchers from Southampton's schools of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), Chemistry, Engineering and Physics and Astronomy, along with the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, were all represented in the capital.

Nanotechnology expert Dr Yasir Noori has worked alongside experts from ECS, Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy on his project, along with partners from the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham.

"Our work has involved developing an electroplating technique to make digital memories," he explains. "Electroplating is commonly used for plating jewellery and coins with gold and silver, however, in our project we are plating Silicon chips with a special material that is made of Germanium, Antimony and Tellurium. This material is the fundamental building block of phase change memories and has been recently shown to have applications in Neuromorphic Computing."

Astronomer Lorenzo Zanisi was presented a Silver Medal for his novel use of data science that exploited similarities between astrophysics and medicine to highlight potential shortcomings in the current methodology for treating high blood pressure.

"This is the most valuable recognition so far of the passion I put into my research," Lorenzo says. "Being selected to participate in such prestigious event was already an honour, winning a prize was something absolutely special. These findings show that there are potentially many unexplored opportunities for breakthroughs that may only be possible when scientists from very different fields work together."

Angela de Fazio, also from the School of Physics and Astronomy, presented in the Chemistry category at the STEM for Britain event.

"We have developed a method for the fabrication of 3D structures based on DNA and nanoparticles," she explains. "These materials can be controlled through the presence of a chemical lock that can be activated and de-activated at will using an appropriate key, which is a specific frequency of light. In the future, these structures could be used in the novel field of 4D printing, where functional materials can change their shape in a post-production step, leading to the creation of new reconfigurable materials."

Dr James Grant-Jacob, of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), presented his advances in the real-time identification of pollution particles such as diesel soot, wood ash and pollen grains in air, and plastic microbeads in water, by using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to analyse the light scattered from the particles when illuminated by a laser.

Dr Milan Milosevic, also of the ORC, demonstrated his progress on an ion implantation technique for automated testing in photonics.

"The technology we are developing is very promising for enabling effective large-scale manufacturing of photonic integrated circuits for the next generation of communications and integrated sensor technologies," he explains. "A live demonstration will be given to the public during a showcase event at Southampton towards the end of the project."

Bioengineering Science researcher Josh Steer presented his work in the field of prosthetics, where he has developed tools to support clinicians during the design process for artificial limbs by predicting the pressure distribution between the user and their socket in real-time. He is set to commercialise the innovative software in a recently announced Enterprise Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The STEM for Britain competition is run by the House of Commons Parliamentary Scientific Committee. Each year it attracts hundreds of entrants, of whom around a third are selected to present their work at a poster competition in Parliament.

Startup founders from the University of Southampton have taken their place among the world's best startups at Silicon Valley's Y Combinator accelerator.

Former student entrepreneurs from Aura Vision and Ysplit - formerly Cluttr - outshone thousands of candidates to join the latest cohort of the world-famous accelerator, which has launched countless global brands including Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit.

Aura Vision has built upon cutting-edge postgraduate research in the School of Electronics and Computer Science to produce a visitor analytics platform for retail stores, while Ysplit has combined the talents of three engineering and computer science graduates to develop a virtual card which shares transactions between groups of friends.

The startups, which were both nurtured in the University's Future Worlds on-campus accelerator, have each received a $150,000 investment and are now valued at over $2 million. They will present to a select audience of investors and press at today's renowned Demo Day as they complete a three-month journey refining products that were first devised during their studies.

Aura Vision helps retailers measure their audience in unprecedented detail, by using state-of-the-art computer vision techniques on existing camera systems to provide precise visitor insights for footfall, heat maps, peel-off rates, area dwell times and service wait times. The startup was co-founded by Daniel Martinho-Corbishley and Jaime Lomeli during their PhDs in the Vision, Learning and Control Research Group.

"The opportunity to join a world-leading US accelerator has put us in a very strong position to scale our sales pipeline in a retail market that is ten times larger than in the UK," Daniel says. "Y Combinator is designed to slingshot you toward Demo Day and we a raring to go in front of the hottest angels and venture capitalists in the Valley.

"It's been a hard graft in the 18 months since we handed in our theses, but we feel so lucky to have been able to commercialise what we first started in Southampton. Our product is in live deployment with paying customers and we are always developing and improving our offer, so expect some exciting announcements in the next few months."

Ysplit creates virtual cards to use with groups, simplifying recurring payments by charging everyone separately. The startup was co-founded by entrepreneurs Tunde Alao, Landon Vago-Hughes and Boateng Opoku-Yeboah, having developed the idea during their studies in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"We've come a long way since we first pitched Cluttr at Future Worlds Dragons' Den and our offering has developed to not just track but solve the payment problems that houses face," Tunde says. "With a YSplit card, everyone will pay their share of the transaction automatically when the card is charged. I have been following Y Combinator for as long as I can remember and have always been impressed by the mentality of its startups. We have been growing as much as possible during the programme and our next milestone will be to hire more engineers and release hundreds of cards over the coming weeks."

Y Combinator has invested in over 1,900 companies since its launch in 2005, with Aura Vision and Ysplit taking their place in the winter 2019 cohort. To date, the accelerator has helped launch 93 companies that are now valued at over $100 billion, directly leading to the creation of over 28,000 jobs worldwide.

Talented tech students descended on the University of Southampton's School of Electronics of Computer Science to contend for one of the UK's foremost inter-university cyber security competitions.

Teams faced 50 challenges ranging from hacking websites to reverse engineering in the Higher Education Cyber Challenge, which was hosted in the University's new Software Projects Laboratory.

The one-day competition drew over 100 students from universities that hold Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research status or run GCHQ-certified cyber degrees.

It aimed to inspire young tech enthusiasts into the cyber security sector, while also honing the skills of those who already have a strong aptitude for ethical hacking and helping them meet like-minded individuals and potential employers.

Team '0x434343' from Cardiff University gathered the most points from available 'flags' in the contest to top the leaderboard, while Southampton students in the 'Sudo-nt' team finished a respectable fifth out of 26 teams overall.

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