Accessing prosthetic limbs in some countries remains a challenge.
Engineers at the University of Southampton will improve access to artificial limbs in lower and middle income countries (LMICs) in a new £900,000 project supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund.
The three year project, which will include mentoring from Associate Professor Gary Wills in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), will carry out studies in Cambodia to develop digital tools that will improve access to prosthetic and orthotic services. Gary will oversee the technical development of distributed database systems for patient records in the project.
Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Head of the Cyber Security Research Group within Electronics and Computer Science (ESC) at the University of Southampton, is to be appointed Chief Scientific Officer for Cloudify NoiPA, a major project of the Italian government aimed at moving the IT administration of the public sector into the cloud.
Professor Sassone will have an explicit mandate for the cyber security aspects of the project, worth in excess of â¬70m, which is run by Italyâs Ministry of Economy and Finance, under the responsibility of Francesco Paolo Schiavo, the Director of the Ministryâs Department of General Administration.
âI am honoured and excited to be involved in such a large, significant and challenging project, both personallyâand for the Cyber Security profile of the University of Southampton,â? said Professor Sassone.
âDue to the legal requirements of protection of personal data as well as the intrinsic strategic and economic value of the information held in the system, the security challenges for Cloudify NoiPA are very significant,â? he continued. âThey range from guaranteeing the physical security of the IT infrastructure to verifying the tightness of security protocols involving humans and machines (through formal methods); from the selection of secure end-user technology to the management of vulnerabilities in obsolete external devices; and from the design of role-based data access control to the compliance with GDPR and other privacy/security regulations.
âThe collection of security requirements and the adoption of effective security design and engineering which works well with the ultra agile software engineering methodologies used to develop NoiPA are a challenge in itself,â? Professor Sassone concluded. âThis highlights for me the unhappy state of affairs regarding the engineering of security requirements, which is now the PhD topic of one of our Cyber Security students.â?
The University of Southampton plays a leading role in cyber security research and education, undertaking basic and applied cyber security research, and providing core capabilities and leadership in support to Universityâs broader security activities.
At the core of these activities is the Universityâs Academic Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security Research in ECS, recognised by the National Cyber Security Centre and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as well as the Cyber Security Academy, a partnership between University, Industry and Government, whose objectives span from research and consultancy to outreach, training and knowledge transfer.
Click here to follow further developments via the Cyber Security Southampton blog.
This yearâs Engineering and Technology Careers Fair, taking place on Tuesday 13 February and organised by the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, welcomes an outstanding range of companies at the forefront of autonomous systems development and technology integration.
The Fair, which has been running for 10 years, has a strong reputation for the quality of companies who have attended over the years and for the important role it plays in enabling Southampton students to meet potential employers across many sectors, including digital technology, finance, security, consultancy, transport, and communications.
International industry leaders such as Arm, Dyson, Intel, Cisco, Bloomberg, Visa and Vodafone will be joining some of the UKâs most respected technical consultancies â TTP, Cambridge Consultants, Roke Manor Research, with significant representation from niche start-up companies in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, data, and cyber security.
âThe Fair provides a fantastic opportunity for students to get a really wide-ranging view of the breadth of opportunities for them in the engineering and technology industries,â says Joyce Lewis, Careers Fair Director. âSouthampton students already have an excellent reputation for their success in the jobs market and the quality of the companies attending the Fair is a great endorsement of this.â
The event takes place in Garden Court on the Highfield Campus and around 1500 students are expected to attend from all departments in the University. In addition to the global companies attending, there will also be strong representation from the University of Southampton Science Park at Chilworth, with companies looking for the brightest students to join their high-tech ventures.
âWe very much welcome the high quality of companies coming to Southampton to employ our students,â said Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering. âThey are taking part in the Fair because they are aware of the quality of our students and their ability to innovate and support the development of future technologies. There are very exciting careers to be built in these new industries and we value our strong links with companies and the excellent relationships built up over time. Many of the stands will include Southampton graduates, demonstrating the contribution that our students are making to the UKâs industrial and business success.â
Students attending the Fair can expect strong interest from leading employers across the technology industries and from companies that are seeking excellent graduates with high-level competence in technology and engineering as well as business and the sciences.
âThe environment we have created here based on our strong research reputation, continues to ensure that companies want to promote their opportunities to our students,â said Professor Al-Hashimi. âFor our part we do our best to increase our studentsâ awareness of career opportunities, right from their very first week at the University. We want to prepare them to find the job they want, and raise their aspirations of future achievement.â
The Fair is on Tuesday 13th February, from 11.00am - 3.30pm in Garden Court, B38. For further information contact Joyce Lewis, tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.
Toby Isaacs and Freddie Temperton with their Rise alarm clock
Two alumni from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have launched a crowdfunding campaign for a smart alarm clock they developed during their studies at the University of Southampton.
The former student entrepreneurs created early prototypes with support from the Universityâs Future Worlds startup incubator and have continued its development since graduating in 2016 to now offer the productâs first units.
âHumans are programmed to wake up with the sun,â? Freddie explains. âThis isnât compatible with modern life, so we use harsh alarms to force ourselves out of bed before our bodies are ready. Rise solves this. It gradually lights your room before your alarm goes off, simulating the sun.â?
Rise can be controlled by a companion app and includes a colour changing LED lamp, omni-directional speaker, auto-dimming OLED, Spotify integration and fast charge USB ports. The startup team, which includes Coventry University graduate Peter Garland, worked with renowned light designer Mortiz Waldemeyer to create a look for the product which is based on the formation of crystals.
âI originally had the idea to combine all the desired technologies of a bedside lamp, alarm clock and speaker in one sleek and elegant device,â? Freddie adds. âWeâve learnt a lot over the last couple of years about the economics of bringing a product to market and more recently had a crash course in marketing and video editing.â?
Freddie worked closely with the Future Worlds incubator during his Electronic Engineering degree and is now based in San Francisco, California, where he has continued a long distance collaboration with UK-based Rise developers. Toby studied Electrical Engineering and now works as a development engineer in Milton Keynes.
âFuture Worlds has helped us in several different ways over the years,â? Freddie explains. âTheyâve given us lots of helpful advice and we enjoyed filming a promo video with them. This helped us to understand this process which has been important for Kickstarter where all projects require a video. Weâve also been speaking to Future Worlds mentor and crowdfunding specialist Chris Buckingham whose knowledge has helped us improve our campaign.â?
The Rise Kickstarter campaign will run until Saturday 24th February. Click here to view the project or make a pledge.
Watch the video made by the Rise team during their studies at ECS
Memristor chips hold the key to the next generation of electronics
Researchers from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton have discovered a way of enhancing the capabilities of an emerging nanotechnology that could open the door to a new generation of electronics. This memristor technology will be showcased at ISCAS 2018, an international circuits and systems conference, in Florence, Italy, in May, where the team will also be presenting seven original research papers.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers show how they have pushed the memristor â a simpler and smaller alternative to the transistor, with the capability of altering its resistance and storing multiple memory states â to a new level of performance after experimenting with its component materials.
Traditionally, the processing of data in electronics has relied on integrated circuits (chips) featuring vast numbers of transistors â microscopic switches that control the flow of electrical current by turning it on or off.
Transistors have got smaller and smaller to meet the increasing demands of technology, but are now reaching their physical limit, with â for example â 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 ârememberingâ the amount of charge that has passed through them â potentially resulting in computers that switch on and off instantly and never forget.
The University of Southampton team has demonstrated a new memristor technology that can store up to 128 discernible memory states per switch, almost four times more than previously reported.
In the study, they describe how they reached this level of performance by evaluating several configurations of functional oxide materials â the core component that gives the memristor its ability to alter its resistance.
Themis Prodromakis, Professor of Nanotechnology and EPSRC Fellow at the University of Southampton, said: âThis is a really exciting discovery, with potentially enormous implications for modern electronics. By 2020 there are expected to be more than 200 billion interconnected devices within the Internet of Things framework â these will generate an incredible amount of data that will need processing.
âMemristors are a key enabling technology for next-generation chips, which need to be highly reconfigurable yet affordable, scalable and energy-efficient.
âWe are thrilled to be working with world-leading industry, bringing innovations into new electronic systems that require bespoke customisation. Such examples include systems that are employed in inaccessible environments; for example, inside the human body, space or other remote or harsh locations.
âAt the same time this technology is ideal for developing novel hardware that can learn and adapt autonomously, much like the human brain.â?
The research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Royal Society.
The University of Southamptonâs Web Science Institute will help build a new intelligent merchant city from the âinternet upâ in a new partnership with Fawley Waterside Limited.
The institute has joined a core technical group that includes Cisco, IBM, Siemens and Vodafone as it develops intelligent infrastructure for the continentâs first town-scale smart city.
Plans for Fawley Waterside will replace the former power station on the outskirts of the New Forest with a thriving residential and commercial waterside community.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Institute and Regius Professor in Computer Science, says, âWe are delighted to be part of this group and to help balance the social and the technical aspects of such an ambitious and brave project.â?
Read the full story on the Web Science Institute news section.
The Sustainable Electronic Technologies group leads research and education activities covering a broad range of topics on nanotechnology, electronics and electrical engineering.
