The University of Southampton

Investing to keep Southampton at the forefront of Computer Science and AI

Multi-million pound investment to keep Southampton at the forefront of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

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 to increase staff by 24 accademic posts over the next three years, £1.4m 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.

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Publications

Parkinson, Edward J., Knigge, Christian, Matthews, James H., Long, Knox S., Higginbottom, Nick, Sim, Stuart A. and Mangham, Samuel W. (2022) Optical line spectra of tidal disruption events from reprocessing in optically thick outflows. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 510 (4), 5426-5443. (doi:10.1093/mnras/stac027).

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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 Mark E. Smith - President and Vice-Chancellor
Email:
ik3n19@soton.ac.uk

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilkaza/

I am a PhD student at the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano-Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS) of the University of Southampton, currently in the second year of the programme. The first year consisted of a number of taught modules related to Artificial Intelligence. I hold a Diploma (5-years undergraduate degree) in Electrical and Computer engineering from the Democritus University of Thrace (Greece) and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Southampton.

My research is on Safe Reinforcement Learning and combines tools from Control Theory and Software Engineering. A big part of it focuses on the field of Human-Agent Interaction. In many real-world applications, where safety is of primary importance, plain reinforcement learning methods (even combined with deep learning) will fail. My goal is to build provably safe reinforcement learning agents for safety-critical real-world systems. Applications that can benefit from my research are mainly autonomous vehicles and a range of robotic tasks.

Research

Research interests

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Online Learning, Human-Agent Interaction, Game Theory, Control Theory, Robotics, Software Engineering

Publications

Kazantzidis, Ilias, Norman, Timothy, Du, Yali and Freeman, Christopher (2022) How to train your agent: active learning from human preferences and justifications in safety-critical environments. International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Milti-Agent Systems 2022, Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. 09 - 13 May 2022. (In Press)

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Email:
i.p.bodala@soton.ac.uk

 PhD

Indu P Bodala is a Lecturer in Computer Science. She received her Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore where she studied vigilance fluctuations during naturalistic tasks using EEG and eye-tracking modalities and developed techniques for vigilance enhancement through multisensory stimuli. She worked as a postdoc at the NUS School of Computing where she studied human factors such as trust and attention during interactions with autonomous agents. She also worked as a postdoc at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, in the areas of HRI and social robotics and developed a robotic coach that can deliver mindfulness. She used longitudinal methods to study changes in the user affect and perceptions of the robotic mindfulness coach which received recognition in the media platforms such as BBC Look East and Raspberry Pi Foundation's Hello World magazine. Her recent work is also shortlisted for the RSJ/KROS Distinguished Interdisciplinary Research Award in the IEEE RO-MAN 2021 conference. Her research interests include human-robot interaction, affective computing, machine learning, healthcare technologies, and cognitive neuroscience. 

The full publication list is available on my google scholar page.

Research

Research interests

My research encompasses, but is not limited to the following topics:

  • human-robot interaction
  • affective computing
  • machine learning
  • healthcare technologies
  • cognitive neuroscience 
  • mental health and wellbeing

Teaching

Modules 

Semester 2, 2021-22:

  • COMP6214 - Open Data Innovation
  • COMP6239 - Mobile Applications Development

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