Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Computer Science at ECS (Electronics and Computer Science) both continue to perform well in the 2019 Guardian University Guide, with EEE retaining overall second place and Computer Science jumping from 16th to eighth place in the subject rankings.

For EEE, this represents the tenth consecutive year in the UK top three, and Southampton top the table for course satisfaction in the subject with a score of 99.0 out of 100.

Professor Paul Lewin, Head of ECS, says: “We have a proven record of delivering high quality teaching in the areas of Computer Science and Electrical and Electronic Engineering and this is reflected in terms of student satisfaction as well as our standing in league tables. Our students benefit from access to world-leading resources as well as the hard work and dedication of all ECS staff engaged in education.â€?

The Guardian University Guide ranks 121 UK institutions and focuses on undergraduate study and experience. Rankings are based around criteria of entry tariffs, student satisfaction, graduate prospects, student-staff ratio and university spend per student.

The University of Southampton rose 12 places to be ranked 23rd overall in the 2019 guide. The improvement comes a month after the University’s return to the top 20 in the 2019 Complete University Guide, in which both EEE and Computer Science were placed in top ten positions.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering, adds: “EEE is consistently ranked among the best departments in the UK and this outstanding result reinforces that the University and ECS provide the highest quality educational experience and training to our students. I am also delighted that Computer Science and Physics are among the top 10 in their disciplines, which is a fantastic achievement. Such consistent results are testament to the expertise and commitment of our staff as well as the leadership at Department and Faculty level.â€?

View the 2019 university league tables in full via the Guardian University Guide website.

First year Computer Science students Kajetan Champlewski and Dan Trickey secured £30,000 for their Questioneer startup at a Dragons’ Den-style investment event with the University of Southampton’s Future Worlds incubator.

The ambitious student entrepreneurs have innovated a maths revision tool that can generate an infinite number of questions and provide feedback, offering a digital alternative to a personal tutor.

Questioneer was one of six student startups pitched in front of four angel investors and a packed live audience at the University of Southampton Students’ Union on Saturday.

Kajetan and Dan have developed their business during BSc Computer Science degrees and are planning a formal launch of their product in September.

“I had the idea for replacing the numbers in revision questions near the end of my A-Levels, but I didn’t really know how to do it practically,â€? Kajetan explains. “I met Dan on the Space Cadets programme at the university and together we developed the idea of turning questions into scripts.

“Students currently have little choice but to trawl through past papers to revise, with little or no feedback. We turn past papers into infinite searchable question banks, complete with worked solutions and feedback on topics. Revision should be about improving your maths skills, not searching through long documents, and that’s what we provide.â€?

Dragon investors Chris Broad, Apple Director of Sales Contracting EMEIA, Andrew Doe, serial digital entrepreneur and founder of confetti.co.uk, Sonja Lami, angel investor and Insight Investment Fund Manager, and Nick Lawton, Chairman of the Lawton Communications Group, interrogated and negotiated on stage with the entrepreneurs. Kajetan and Dan secured £30,000 of investment from Andrew, Sonja and Nick.

Southampton Computer Science graduate Tunde Alao also secured £50,000 on stage with co-founders Landon Vago-Hughes and Boateng Opoku-Yeboah for their Cluttr app, a private social network with features for shared houses. Tunde graduated in 2017 and runs a YouTube channel for iOS and Android app development tutorials which has over 14,000 subscribers and 2.3 million views.

First year Aeronautics and Astronautics student Connell McLaughlin was pledged £100,000 by four investors – including a surprise last minute offer by phone – in a dramatic finale to a pitching event that was already breaking records for the on-campus incubator. Connell has created Route Reports, an embedded sensor system and web-based dashboard that is detecting and reporting hazards like potholes and overhanging branches on public transport.

Fourth year Electronic Engineering student Dylan Grey showed great promise with his online gift service BOON, and Mathematical Studies and Actuarial Science students Louis Dykes and Yacob Siadatan pitched well for their business Airscape, but both start-ups were deemed too early for investment at this stage in their development.

Dr Reuben Wilcock, Future Worlds Director, says, “It’s been great to see an infectious entrepreneurial culture building on campus in recent years which now seen over £450,000 pledged on-stage to student startups at our four annual pitching events. The student entrepreneurs really impressed the investors on Saturday with their passion, professionalism and presentation, and it will be exciting to see what their fledgling businesses can achieve in the coming years. Two startups from the 2017 showcase are now valued at over £1m and will be based in Silicon Valley and London from this summer. Future Worlds will be mentoring the startups as they continue their entrepreneurial journeys alongside their studies and strive to impact society with their innovations.â€?

The University of Southampton has been awarded a multi-million pound programme to lead the development of innovative nanotechnology that could open the door to a new generation of electronics.

Professor Themis Prodromakis from the Biomedical Electronics research group within Electronics and Computer Science is the principal investigator of the predominantly Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded programme, which, along with industrial contributions, exceeds £11million.

Working with Imperial College London and the University of Manchester, as well as industrial partners, the project will centre on memristors and their ability to enable electronics systems to be configured with increased capability, as opposed to transistors.

Prof Themis Prodromakis said: “We are thankful to EPSRC for granting us this opportunity to enhance modern electronics technologies through functional oxides. I am delighted to lead this very exciting project.

“Memristor technologies bring great prospects for next-generation chips, which need to be highly reconfigurable yet affordable, scalable and energy-efficient, not to mention secure.

“To achieve this, we have assembled some of the UK’s best academics and industrialists for developing the core technology as well as the required tools for demonstrating the benefits of the technology in real-working services and products.â€?

Traditionally, the processing of data in electronics has relied on integrated circuits (chips) featuring vast numbers of transistors – microscopic switches that control the flow of electrical current by turning it on or off.

The size of transistors has reduced to meet the increasing demands of technology, but are now reaching their physical limit, with – for example – the processing chips that power smartphones containing an average of five billion transistors.

Memristors could hold the key to a new era in electronics, being both smaller and simpler in form than transistors, low-energy, and with the ability to retain data by ‘remembering’ the amount of charge that has passed through them – potentially resulting in computers that switch on and off instantly and never forget.

The University of Southampton has previously demonstrated a new memristor technology that can store up to 128 discernible memory states per switch, almost four times more than previously reported.

Prof Themis Prodromakis added: “For decades we have followed the pattern that computers should have separate processor and memory units, but these are now struggling to cope with the masses of data in the public domain. Soon the span of functionality in future Internet of Things (IoT) systems will be much wider than what we know from today's smartphones, tablets or smart watches.

“This unique programme of activities will allow us to develop reconfigurable electronic systems that are at the forefront of innovation through being embedded almost everywhere in our physical world; within vehicles and infrastructure or even within the human body.

“We are thrilled that our vision is shared with world-leading industry and together we look forward in bringing the change in modern electronics.â€?

Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) at the University of Southampton was ranked second for graduate prospects and first in the Russell Group for student satisfaction in the Complete University Guide 2019 league table.

Southampton was placed fourth in the country for EEE and Computer Science returned to the top ten at seventh, as the University rose six places to 20th overall out of 131 institutions in the rankings. In the South East, Southampton’s Computer Science offering was ranked second only to the University of Oxford.

Physics and Astronomy, another department in Southampton’s Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, maintained its top 20 placement in the rankings, finishing 19th. The subject was ranked first in the South East for student satisfaction and second in the same category for the whole Russell Group.

In total, nine Southampton subject areas were placed in the national top 10 by the 2019 guide. EEE and Computer Science are joined by Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering (4th), Anatomy and Physiology (8th), Aural and Oral Sciences (3rd), Civil Engineering (6th), Communication and Media Studies (9th), Education (10th) and Mechanical Engineering (6th).

The Complete University Guide – one of three principal UK-based rankings for UK universities – is based on a wide range of criteria including UCAS entry tariffs, student satisfaction, research excellence and intensity, graduate prospects, student-staff ratio, university spending on services and facilities, graduates receiving a first or upper second class honours degree, and degree completion.

The University of Southampton is set to join The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s prestigious national institute for data science.

Subject to signing a partnership agreement, it is anticipated that Southampton and the University of Bristol will be working with the Institute and its university partners to develop collaborative programmes of research from summer 2018. The Institute is named in honour of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in theoretical and applied mathematics, engineering and computing are considered to be the key disciplines comprising the emerging field of data science.

All new universities joining the Turing network have been admitted based on the excellence of their research and its alignment with the Institute’s research interests, their ability to bring new expertise and opportunities which add to the core strengths of the Institute and its existing partners, and their willingness to contribute financially to the Institute.

Professor Mark Spearing, Vice-President (Research and Enterprise), University of Southampton, commented: “We are a pioneering world-leader in computer, data and web science and becoming a university partner of The Alan Turing Institute is an important step as we seek to further expand our capabilities in harmony with other world-leaders in these fields. This partnership comes at a time when the digital world faces many challenges and it is only through collaborative efforts like this that we’ll succeed in addressing the world’s societal and scientific needs.â€?

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University added: “The University of Southampton’s ambitions in Data Science and Data-centric Engineering are closely aligned with the strategic aims of the Alan Turing Institute. Our expertise here is leading the way in data collection, integration and conversion into knowledge and evidence that informs business, industrial and governmental strategy. I welcome our membership of the Alan Turing Institute as a defining moment for Southampton, reflecting our continued key contribution to Data Science and its impact worldwide.â€?

The addition of Southampton and Bristol marks the end of the first phase of expansion for the Turing, and the focus over the coming months will be to assimilate the new universities into the Institute’s community and to generate ambitious collaborative research programmes.

Alan Wilson, CEO of The Alan Turing Institute, said: “Together, the Turing’s university network represents a powerful coalition of research excellence in data science and artificial intelligence in the UK. It is with real pleasure that we welcome Bristol and Southampton into the Turing network, adding their substantial expertise to the Institute’s already formidable network of academic talent.â€?

Southampton and Bristol join a growing network of university partners in the Alan Turing Institute: since November 2017 six universities (Birmingham, Exeter, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Queen Mary University of London) have been announced as new partners, joining Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Warwick and UCL who were selected as founder members when the Institute was created in 2015.

Researchers from the 13 universities will work together alongside the Institute’s industry, government and third sector partners to spearhead cutting-edge research and apply this research to real-world problems, with the goal to create lasting effects for science, society and the world we live in.

Professor Tom Melham, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford (one of the five founding universities of The Alan Turing Institute) and Institute Trustee commented: “The expansion of the Turing’s university network and the associated potential for collaboration will enable us to undertake even more ambitious and impactful research in data science and AI. As a founder member of the Institute, we are delighted to welcome Bristol and Southampton and look forward to working with all the university partners of the Turing to bring UK talent and expertise in these new technologies to the fore.â€?

Researchers from the University of Southampton have won European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants totalling more than €12 million.

Professor Lajos Hanzo, from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), and Professors Peter Kazansky and Nikolay Zheludev, from the Optoelectronics Research Centre, have raised over €7.5 million for pioneering research in the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering as three of five funding awards at the University.

It is the second time that Lajos has won an ERC Advanced Grant, joining an esteemed group of only 29 other UK researchers to have accomplished this in the last 10 years.

He has successfully bid for €2.49 million for his QuantCom research project, which aims to solve part of the ‘quantum jigsaw puzzle’ and contribute to the conception of the wireless Quantum Internet, or Qinternet, conceived for seamless high-speed connectivity across the globe at uncompromised security.

Lajos, Head of the Next Generation Wireless Research Group, says, “It is a humbling experience to contribute to this new wave of frontier research, which would not have been possible without the closely-knit collaboration with my much valued colleagues in ECS.â€?

Professor Peter Kazansky has been awarded €2.5 million for his project entitled ENIGMA (ENgIneerinG MAterial properties with advanced laser direct writing). The project will examine the interaction between intense ultra-short light pulses and matter at, or below, the wavelength scale, reaching states of matter found only deep in the cores of the Earth and other planets. Professor Nikolay Zheludev has been awarded €2.57 million for his FLEET (FLying ElectromagnEtic Toroids) project, which will study the generation, detection and interaction with matter of Flying Toroids, a type of light pulses never experimentally studied before.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering, says, “ERC Advanced Grants are a prestigious and competitive source of funding and I’d like to congratulate Lajos, Peter and Nikolay on their excellent funding awards. This unprecedented success demonstrates the quality and breadth of research being led in our Departments as our researchers advance ground-breaking developments in their field.â€?

Professor Malcolm Levitt, from Southampton’s School of Chemistry, and Professor Tony Brown, from the School of Geography and Environment, have also received a combined €5.42 million for projects focusing on the use of use of ancient agricultural terraces and Enhanced Spectroscopy applications respectively.

A team of cyber savvy students from the University of Southampton have placed second in the Inter-ACE Challenge, the UK’s biggest cyber security competition for university students.

Laurie Kirkaldy, Josh Curry, David Young and Izzy Whistlecroft – also known as ‘The Hapless Techno Weenies’ from Southampton – brought home a prize of £3,000 after finishing runners-up to the University of Edinburgh in a field of 34 teams, drawn from 18 of the country’s top universities accredited as Academic Centres of Excellence (ACE) in Cyber Security Research.

This is the third consecutive year that Southampton teams have placed in the competition’s top three. Laurie (4th year student, MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering), Josh (4th year student, MEng Electromechanical Engineering) and Izzy (PhD candidate, Cyber Security) all competed last year. For David (Mathematical Sciences graduate and current PhD candidate, Cyber Security), this marked his third consecutive Inter-ACE appearance.

The competition, supported by GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, is designed to attract the next generation of cyber security talent.

Over two days, the students faced 20 challenges set by experts from the host University of Cambridge and sponsors including Context IS and Palo Alto Networks. The students faced a number of different scenarios, from preventing a hack on a UK city’s infrastructure to a tap on an undersea communications cable. Connected devices such as a children’s toy were also used to demonstrate the impact of hacking techniques.

Now in its third year, Inter-ACE was established to help resolve the vast and growing cyber security skills gap, with an estimated shortfall of 1.8m workers worldwide by 2022. Inter-ACE aims 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.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of the Southampton’s Cyber Security Academy, said: “Once again, our students have performed extremely well in a competition that challenges their ability to think and act quickly but precisely to an unexpected range of cyber security threats. Acting as a supervisor during the event, I was also able to see firsthand how well they worked as a team which also says a great deal about the quality of the learning environment at the Cyber Security Academy in Southampton.â€?

Professor Frank Stajano, Founder of Inter-ACE and Professor of Security and Privacy at the University of Cambridge, said: “It’s no secret that the cyber security industry is suffering from a large and growing skills gap. We must do more to attract a more diverse pool of talent into the field. This is about demonstrating that careers in cyber security not only help to keep your country, your friends and your family safe, but are varied, valued and most of all fun.

“There is still much more to be achieved, but I have been delighted over the last three years to be welcoming a growing number of female participants and contestants from increasingly diverse backgrounds to the two-day competition. We had 18 women competing this year, as opposed to just two when we started! It's working. There is no set profile for a cyber security professional and Inter-ACE contributes to reaching more people with that important messageâ€?.

The winning team from Edinburgh will now compete with the best of the USA at C2C –‘Cambridge2Cambridge’, a transatlantic contest jointly organised by MIT and the University of Cambridge, and hosted by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts this summer.

The Southampton team can join them by competing in an online qualifying event.

Researchers from the University of Southampton will help ease access to over 800,000 datasets across Europe as part of a three-year contract funded by the European Commission.

Open data experts in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) will continue their partnership with a continental consortium working on the European Data Portal, a platform that harvests the metadata of public sector information across 34 nations.

The contract renewal, worth several million Euros, will drive ongoing development of the portal along with related data economy studies and consulting services. The project will tap into Southampton’s extensive expertise in the field to improve current human-data interaction, helping entrepreneurs and businesses exploit the resources to extract maximum insight and value.

Professor Elena Simperl, from Southampton’s Web and Internet Science research group says, “The European Data Portal has made a huge quantity of data available – and this number will only increase – however there is a risk that if there isn’t an effective search tool then users will struggle to find data that is relevant. We want to improve the usefulness of the portal by improving the way people search through and make sense of datasets.

“Researchers in ECS have done a lot of work to publish open government data in the UK and I hope this new contract will provide the opportunity for lessons we have learned through national open data portals to benefit other EU countries.â€?

A study published by consortium partner Capgemini in 2015 estimated the market size for open data in Europe would increase by around 37% to €75.7 billion by 2020. Public sector information made available through the European Data Portal includes figures on business, defence, education, health and transport.

Research Fellow Dr Luis-Daniel Ibáñez and Senior Research Assistant Johanna Walker will be part of Southampton’s contribution to the new contract.

“This prestigious project confirms the position we have in open government data and is important because of how it ties to other ECS research that is understanding how people engage with data and evidence,â€? Elena says. “Southampton has been at the forefront of the open data movement internationally and I look forward to seeing this continue for the next three years and beyond.â€?