The University of Southampton is investing millions of pounds in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to retain and enhance its international reputation for teaching and research.

The ambitious expansion of staff and facilities is timed with the 75th anniversary of its renowned School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

ECS is a leading university department of its kind in the UK. Throughout its rich history, from pioneering work on radio engineering in the 1940s to UK Government recognition of our cyber security expertise 70 years later, ECS achievements have been transforming the world, defining and developing new areas of research and inspiring generations of students.

In the year that the UK Government launched its first National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy, this strategic investment will lay the foundations at Southampton for an ever brighter future by making key appointments across seven research areas, growing the number and quality of students, and building new laboratories alongside enhanced digital learning.

The School's plans include an additional 1.7m GBP to increase staff by 24 accademic posts over the next three years, 1.4m GBP for a new research laboratory in robotics and AI, and a major capital investment in teaching facilities. The expansion will shape new research areas that change our world for the better and develop new teaching programmes that will be available by 2023/24.

Professor Mark E. Smith, President and Vice-Chancellor, says: "Southampton is renowned for offering a first-rate education in an exceptional research environment, but we do not merely rest on our history and past successes. This bold expansion of staff and facilities in Electronics and Computer Science will place Southampton at the cutting-edge of AI teaching and research long into the future, delivering our mission to change the world for the better."

Professor Paul Lewin, Head of ECS, says: "We wish to grow a School for the future, developing new research activities and educational programmes that continue to make the highest quality contributions to science and engineering in an increasingly uncertain world facing significant global challenges.

"The scale of investment is significant, and our ambition is to grow the number of academic staff in Computer Science by 50 percent. Artificial Intelligence will be fundamental to our future world and this major investment in staff and laboratories will ensure that we remain at the forefront of this revolution."

The commitment includes a computer laboratory for up to 300 undergraduate and postgraduate students for teaching, laboratory/project work and online assessment activities. The plan also includes adjacent space for AI research laboratories to cement the research-led teaching aspects of degree programmes.

ECS at Southampton's core strengths lie in its combination of expertise across both electronics and computer science. The interdisciplinary nature of its research have driven many areas that are internationally leading, with strong industrial links delivering vast real-world impact. The School is home to a Centre for Health Technologies, Centre for Machine Intelligence and Centre for Internet of Things and Pervasive Systems, and leads the UK's Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub.

The strategic investment will create a critical mass in AI at Southampton by recruiting across seven research themes: Automation and Robotics, Computer Engineering, Digital Health, Human-centred AI, Human-Systems Interaction, Machine Learning, and Theoretical Computer Science and Software Engineering.

Find out more about current opportunities for Associate Professors/Professors and Lecturers on the ECS recruitment microsite.

International recognition for Southampton Electronics and Computer Science graduate

A Southampton Electronics and Computer Science graduate has received international recognition for the quality of his BSc Computer Science project by being awarded first prize at a global conference.

Wojciech Rozowski, who graduated from his degree this summer, was awarded best undergraduate project in the ACM Student Research Competition at the International Conference on Functional Programming.

His third-year project Formally verified derivation of an executable and terminating CEK machine from call-by-value λp̂-calculus focused on building an executable interpreter for a programming language, which is formally proved to be correct. He presented a summary of his project findings to a panel of judges and attendees at the conference.

Wojciech says: ?I was truly happy to find out that I managed to make my academic debut a really good one. It was a great honour for me to have my work recognised at such a well-known conference in the programming languages theory community and I was impressed by the quality and depth of other student projects. The awards ceremony was definitely a highlight for me, as I got the chance to meet with Professor Jeremy Gibbons from Oxford University - one of the top researchers and contributors in my field.

""I decided to enter the competition to gain some practical experience in presenting my research and dealing with peer review. Winning was an amazing opportunity to have a debut in the research community of Programming Language Theory and network with top academics in my field before starting my PhD.""

The ACM Student Research Competition (SRC) offers a unique forum for undergraduate and graduate students to present their original research before a panel of judges and attendees at well-known ACM-sponsored and co-sponsored conferences.

Wojciech used a language called Agda for his project, which is both a programming language and a proof assistant that allowed him to prove mathematical theorems about the properties of the created code.

Since graduating from Southampton, he has taken up a PhD at University College London in the Programming Principles, Logic and Verification Research Group. He says his lecturers at Southampton made him fall in love with Theoretical Computer Science and Programming Language Theory and resulted in him pursuing a dissertation in this area.

The students completed carbon negative internships at Southampton Science Park start-up Absolar this summer, where they supported an innovative project that remotely assess buildings for their solar power potential.

BSc Computer Science student Joshua Sanchez, MEng Electronic Engineering with Nanotechnology student Cameron Elliot and MEng Aeronautics and Astronautics student Miguel Cano Puerto marked the project's success by planting an acer campestre tree in the grounds of the Science Park.

This summer's student work fed into an existing carbon negative project funded by the national Space Research and Innovation Network for Technology (SPRINT) programme. Josh, Miguel and Cameron spent four weeks extending their knowledge of software development, undertaking advanced data analysis and building machine learning models.

Professor Kirk Martinez, from the School of Electronics and Computer Science, says: "Our SPRINT project with Absolar has given us a chance to involve our undergraduates in real-world problem solving that has a positive impact. Their enthusiasm and skill has helped us create a tool to evaluate solar energy production in homes. It involved a lot of challenges in different technical areas - and it has been great to see their creativity in finding solutions."

Joshua adds: "It was a really good opportunity to work with innovative technology and talented people, for the benefit of improving access to renewable energy with a project that I saw from start to finish."

During the internship, the team visited the West Solent Solar Co-operative solar farm in Lymington to learn how solar PV operates and to see first-hand how communities can come together to generate green electricity in a sustainable manner.

To achieve carbon negativity the students were car sharing throughout. They also used carbon neutral IT suppliers and carried out offsets where carbon impact was unavoidable.

The tree planting ceremony was attended by many stakeholders, including Absolar's partner in the project, Future Isle of Wight.

Absolar, founded by entrepreneurial engineer Dr Phil Wu, is based upon years of cutting-edge research in the University's Sustainable Energy Research Group.

Nic Cory, Director at Absolar, says: "It's fantastic to give students from the University of Southampton a chance to practice and develop their skills with real projects, especially ones that they get to see through to the end and that will make a tangible difference to local action on climate change."

Nanoelectronics researcher recognised as 'Future Leader'

Flexible Electronics expert Dr Dimitra Georgiadou from the University of Southampton has been singled out as 'Future Leader' through a prestigious fellowships scheme.

Dr Georgiadou's research will seek to develop a new form of neuromorphic systems, enabling advances in-memory computing and artificial visual memory applications using materials and processes compatible with flexible substrates.

She is one of two Southampton scientists awarded over £1.2m to spend the next four years working on ground-breaking advances through their UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowships.

The UKRI scheme supports talented researchers who will help ensure that the UK continues to be a world leader in research and innovation.

Dr Georgiadou, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Electronics Frontiers in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, says: "Neuromorphic engineering is poised to revolutionise information technologies by developing electronic devices that emulate the biological neural networks. Inspired by the concepts of optogenetics, I aim to fabricate optoelectronic devices, which will resemble actual neural synapses that can stimulate the neurons to fire in response to light.

"In contrast to solely electrical synapses, photoelectric artificial synapses can be spatially confined, reducing the crosstalk and noise, while they enable higher sensitivity and signal propagation speed.

"An emerging application of such platforms is in neuromorphic vision, where light sensors mimic the spatio-temporal nature of human vision, not only by turning light into electrical signals, but also by capturing and sending the useful-only information to the processing unit in an extremely efficient manner."

This could revolutionise real-time tasks such as autonomous locomotion, soft robotics or point-of-care diagnostics.

Dr Patrick Ledingham, a Lecturer in Quantum Light and Matter in the School of Physics and Astronomy, will use his UKRI fellowship to look at the challenges facing the implementation of a quantum internet - a revolution that would tackle issues of identity theft and cyber-attacks.

UKRI Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, says: "I am delighted that UKRI is able to support the next generation of research and innovation leaders through our Future Leaders Fellowship programme.

"The new Fellows will have the support and freedom they need to pursue their research and innovation ideas, delivering new knowledge and understanding and tackling some of the greatest challenges of our time."