The School of Electronics and Computer Science is a leading partner in a European research project which will build trust and validation into distributed computer networks. The EU Provenance project will enable users of Grids—networks of computers at distributed locations–to understand the process by which a particular result was generated. This is fundamental to many real-life applications in science, engineering, medicine, and supply chain management. Indeed, without such reliable background information, users cannot reproduce, analyse or validate processes or experiments. Provenance will provide a documented history for information generated and managed within a Grid infrastructure. This means that the information, especially the results of processes or modifications, can be inspected, validated and reasoned about by authorised users who need to be sure that information controls have not been altered or abused. ‘Ultimately we are building trust, proof and validation into Grids,’ says Steve Munroe, EU Provenance Exploitation Manager in ECS, ‘enabling users to have the highest levels of confidence in the information available. ‘Grids operate by dynamically creating services at opportunistic moments to satisfy the needs of a particular user,’ he explains. ‘These services may belong to different stakeholders operating under various different policies about information sharing. It’s therefore crucially important that the results generated by such a composition of services can be trusted by the user. But when the services disband, how can we verify the processes that contributed to the final result?’ As an example, he points to organ transplant management, which must obey a variety of regulations imposed by different governing bodies. ‘Provenance can be used to determine that a given process has adhered to the necessary regulations,’ says Munroe, ‘thus enabling the end user to place trust in the results received.’ Provenance has already produced a first public version of software requirements for the provenance architecture, covering both the logical and process architectures of provenance systems. The process architecture developed by the project is generic, in the sense that a core set of functionality that any industrial strength provenance architecture should have has been identified and designed. Translating this to a real-world instance, such as aerospace engineering or organ transplant management, then involves implementing the logical architecture, as well as extensive interactions with experts to integrate the system with target domain applications. The EU Provenance project partners are: School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton; IBM UK Ltd; Cardiff University (Welsh eScience Centre); Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft - und Raumfahrt s.V, Universitat Politechica de Catalunya; and the Computer and Automation Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; the EU Provenance Project Architect is Professor Luc Moreau of ECS. ‘We also are developing a methodology that will facilitate the development of provenance-aware systems in other domains,’ adds Munroe, ‘and we aim to develop preliminary standardisation proposals for provenance systems to submit to the relevant standardisation bodies.’

A new Professor in the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton is working towards making global computing a dependable reality.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, previously Head of the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, has joined ECS to help raise the School's profile and promote its external visibility in theoretical computer science.

After completing his MSc and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Pisa, Professor Sassone worked for a range of industrial and academic organisations, including Hewlett-Packard, and the universities of Aarhus (Denmark), Catania (Italy) and Queen Mary, University of London, where he developed operational and denotational models for mobile, distributed systems.

During his career, he developed an interest in the foundations of computation, with a particular interest in global ubiquitous computing and in how theoretical results can impact on practice and the industry at large.

He believes that the infrastructure will soon exist for global computing, but is not just about weaving sensors and processors into fabrics, or positioning RFID tags and ad hoc networking everywhere: it requires an in-depth understanding and a substantial furthering of the foundations of computer science.

He commented: 'We are moving towards seamless computing or, what is increasingly known as, global ubiquitous computing, which means that we will have information available everywhere which can be processed cheaply and at high speed by a multitude of diverse computing devices. My interest is not in just making the technology happen, but in making sure that we have the right foundational tools and that we understand the systems we deploy.'

Professor Sassone joined ECS because he believed that it would provide more opportunities for him to apply his foundation perspectives to applied research. He believes that as his understanding of the underpinning theories increases, he will be able to find synergies with applied research and mount joint attacks to the ubiquitous computing 'grand' challenge.

This year’s Multimedia Systems Conference was voted a great success, not just by the student participants and their lecturers, but also by the event’s sponsors, Motorola Automotive.

The annual conference forms a major part of the School’s final-year Computer Science course in Multimedia Systems. Students have the ambitious task of organizing and running a day-long conference, which showcases their own research findings in the form of presented papers. The whole process is as much as possible like an authentic conference, with individual research project posters, anonymous peer review, and a full day of presentations.

Out of 46 submissions to the conference this year, 16 were selected for presentation in four tracks: Multimedia Networking, Multimedia Storage and Retrieval, Content Creation and Application, and Distributed Multimedia Information Systems

Kevin Fogarty of Motorola Automotive gave the keynote presentation. ‘The whole event was a great success,’ he said, ‘with a high standard of posters and presentations. The topics chosen were very much in line with Motorola’s vision of “seamless mobilityâ€?.’

This year’s event was held at The Avenue Campus, and attracted a large audience. Prizes for best poster and best presentation went, respectively, to Emma Lee Choon and Miran Baric. The organizing committee was chaired by Josephine Ekman and Heather Packer; and the Multimedia Systems course co-ordinator is Dr David Millard.

Last year Dr Millard, along with Dr Mark Weal, Dr Hugh Davis and Su White, received a Vice-Chancellor's Teaching Award for the Multimedia Systems course, on which the conference is an innovative feature.

A new machine to manufacture glass fibres which will be the best in the world could speed up the way messages are communicated through the Internet. Glass fibres with tiny holes through them have many uses, even manipulating light to enable messages to find their own way through the Internet. The new machine involves very complex mechanical components using jet-engine alloys, highly specialised construction techniques, and a special understanding of how to manipulate glass.

The University has already played a major role in the development of technology which led to the Internet. This new research could make communication on the Internet even faster.

The machine will be developed by Professor Harvey Rutt, Deputy Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and Deputy Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), Professor David Richardson, also a Deputy Director of ORC, and co-investigator, Ken Frampton, head of the ECS mechanical workshop. They have just received a grant of £85,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

This new research into ‘The Ultimate Soft Glass Extrusion Machine’ (TUSGEM), has been awarded as a result of earlier work by the team and others at the ORC on using soft glasses to develop the Holey Fibres (HF) in 1995, which enabled glass to be extruded and fibres to be made which contain tiny holes. Their work since then has led them to look for new processing and fabrication techniques for glass fibres.

Professor Rutt commented: ‘This is an exciting development which could revolutionise manufacture of these astonishingly versatile fibres. Ken Frampton has done extensive work on researching the properties of glass and began by using FIMO (children’s modelling clay) to construct dummy fibre preforms which looked like giant coloured beads of toothpaste! His inventive approach to building the machine has been crucial.’

Ken Frampton explained: ‘Although the clay doesn’t behave exactly like glass, it allowed us to look at how the glass could be heated and squidged out through the holes, and how it flows through the machine. The challenge is working with multiple holes. Our new machine will provide a much more accurate way of squeezing the material.’

ECS spin-out company Perpetuum has attracted £2.2 million in further investment. UK venture capital company Quester has committed £1.4 million in funding with additional investment coming from Top Technology Ventures and SULIS, a University Challenge Fund managed by Quester.

Perpetuum produces innovative micro-generators which harvest energy from vibrations, to provide power without batteries or external electrical supplies.

‘The innovative microgenerators convert energy from existing vibrations to electrical energy which then powers monitoring sensors for all types of machinery. These self-powered sensor systems eliminate the need for large batteries or cumbersome electrical wires which can be difficult to access and expensive to maintain,’ commented Roy Freeland, Chief Executive of Perpetuum. ‘The technology addresses the rapidly growing and substantial market for wireless sensor systems used to monitor and control equipment and machinery. This new investment will enable us to complete development of our first commercial products.’

The company which spun-out in 2004 has successfully demonstrated pre-production units in trial installations with three major international customers in military, water utility and petrochemical applications.

The company’s patented technology was developed at the University of Southampton by a team of academics led by Professor Neil White of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

Henry Sallitt, an investment director at Quester, added: ‘This is a very exciting opportunity in what is forecast to be a very substantial market. Perpetuum is a good example of the strong technology coming out of the UK’s leading universities and is indicative of the increasing number of high quality early-stage investment opportunities we are seeing.’

The University of Southampton works with the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Surrey in the SETsquared Partnership, and the SULIS seedcorn fund to create and support new businesses across Southern England. Perpetuum was founded by academics from the University of Southampton with funding from the SULIS seedcorn fund and a fund managed by the University of Southampton and IP2IPO, the intellectual property (IP) company that commercialises university technology.

In a book just published, new evidence revealed about the impact of sex and symbiosis indicates that Darwin’s famous belief that evolution proceeds only gradually is in need of revision.

In Compositional Evolution (MIT Press) Dr Richard Watson, of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, claims that Darwin’s gradualist approach of evolution is only one possibility and that certain biological phenomena provide the possibility of implementing alternative processes.

He commented: ‘Challenging gradualism has been seen as evolutionary heresy, but I show that evolution by natural selection needs to be separated from the assumption of gradual change - large adaptive changes need not be seen as evolutionary heresy’

In his book he models a number of mechanisms within natural evolution which suggest non-gradual change--such as those involved in the formation of the eukaryotic cell (from which all plants and animals are descended). His new theory shows that sex, symbiosis and other mechanisms involving the coevolution of cooperating entities move beyond the normal evolutionary dogma of ‘accumulation of small changes’.

This has important consequences for what one considers difficult for evolution, he says: ‘For example, the concept of “irreducible complexityâ€? (believed to indicate that a system can’t be evolved) depends on the assumption of “successive slight modificationsâ€?.

‘Some systems that appear to be irreducibly complex could in fact be easily evolved by compositional mechanisms.

‘It also has implications for how we view the roles of competition and cooperation in nature,’ he adds. ‘Competition has been seen as the norm and cooperation as a weird aberration, but this is too simplistic.

‘The fact that important innovations can result from cooperative symbiosis needs to be integrated into evolutionary theory.’

Dr Watson, a member of the newly formed research group, Science and Engineering of Natural Systems at the University, has been named in IEEE Intelligent Systems’ first-ever “Ten to Watchâ€? awards, recognising the work of new researchers worldwide; the awardees will be featured in the May/June 2006 special issue which celebrates 50 years of Artificial Intelligence. He joined ECS in 2005 from Harvard University.

His work seeks to foster interdisciplinary exchange between computer science and biology, showing how some of the deepest questions of these fields can be approached with the tools and insights of the other.

He commented: ‘Hopefully, in the same way that symbiosis has provided innovation in nature, a union of ideas between computer science and biology promises a type of innovation that neither discipline could achieve through small modifications within its own local population of theories and methods.’

Melanie Mitchell, Portland State University, says ‘This book is a work of truly interdisciplinary science; it demonstrates that the joint study of evolutionary computation and evolutionary biology can produce important results for both fields ...essential reading for …[those] who want to know how ideas from computation can create new perspectives’.

Scientists at the University of Southampton are undertaking research leading to intelligent sensor networks which could accelerate developments in biometrics, health care and other fields.

A team at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), led by Professor Neil White, has been awarded a £400,000 Platform Grant by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to explore new directions in the field of intelligent sensors.

The team will investigate potential in four key areas: wearable, self-powered sensors; novel biometric systems; intelligent, energy-aware wireless sensor nodes, and intelligent sensors in healthcare.

Professor White commented: 'The future of intelligent sensors lies in the integration of state-of-the art developments in both electronics and computer science and the Platform Grant will allow us to address advanced aspects of sensor technologies.'

This project has particular significance for the field of biometrics, where the researchers have already used polymer thick-film sensors to identify people by the way they tap out rhythms on a keypad. They now propose to develop a smart keypad to develop this work further.

Professor White noted: 'Security is a major application area for smart environments, particularly in the field of biometrics where an individual is identified by a behavioural or physiological feature. In order to fully assess the effectiveness of our earlier research, we will need to develop an intelligent keypad, which is able to measure the force and timing information related to each key press, analyse an individual's characteristic signature and transmit secure data.'

The ECS team has 25 years experience in developing intelligent sensors. The challenge now is to develop networks of low-power wireless sensors which can operate autonomously in uncertain environments, respond to changing environmental conditions and carry out automated diagnosis and recovery.

The researchers will also seek to develop intelligent energy-aware sensor nodes capable of harvesting power within the environment through the use of photovoltaic cells and vibration generators integrated within a network. Their quest to develop human-powered microgenerators, which are operated by the natural movement of the body, could also make self-powered heart pacemakers a reality and make it possible for people to wear human-powered devices.

The team of investigators, which will work on this project for three years, is based in the ECS Electronic Systems Design and the Grid and Pervasive Computing research groups and includes Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Professor David De Roure, Dr Paul Chappell, Dr Nick Harris and Dr Steve Beeby.

Professor Wendy Hall named one of UK science's outstanding women

International Women's Day, 8 March makes a fitting backdrop for the launch of a contemporary photographic collection celebrating the outstanding achievements of six world-class British women working in the fields of science, engineering and technology (SET) who have achieved leadership positions.

One of these six women is Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and Head of the world-leading School of Electronics and Computer Science. She is one of two winners in the category 'Scientific Discovery and SET Innovation'.

Professor Wendy Hall has achieved real research eminence in computer science in the areas of hypermedia, multimedia and knowledge technologies, and now holds important strategic roles in science and technology education and policy formation. She is currently Senior Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, and was recently appointed to the Scientific Council of the new European Research Council.

'I am really thrilled to have been named among these six outstanding women and to be part of the collection's foundation,' says Wendy Hall. 'It is a tremendous honour for me to be able to represent women's achievements in science and technology in this way, especially on International Women's Day, and I hope the exhibition will inspire many other women in the future.'

Commissioned by the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET (UKRC) and executed by acclaimed photographer, Robert Taylor, the collection offers a personal and unexpected interpretation of the groundbreaking women. On show for the first time at the British Library at the UKRC's 2nd annual conference on Wednesday 8 March, the visiting collection will be enlarged each year to create a comprehensive and inspiring legacy for future generations.

Rt. Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Minister of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Minister for Women and Equality comments: 'We know that 70 per cent of women with science, engineering and technology qualifications are not working in these professions, so it is particularly appropriate to celebrate those that are making significant contributions. I hope by launching this exhibition on International Women's Day it will not only inspire and encourage more women into SET, helping to create a more equitable and diverse workforce in the UK, but also ensure that women in these fields are included and celebrated as part of our scientific heritage.'

The women featured in the collection come from a variety of backgrounds, united by their outstanding contributions to pioneering work, for which many of them have received international recognition. The photographed women were nominated to take part in the exhibition earlier this year. A judging panel selected two finalists to be photographed in each of the following three categories:

Scientific Discovery and SET Innovation: Jocelyn Bell Burnell CBE, Visiting Chair in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, whose research on pulsars was recognised by a Nobel Prize to her supervisor Professor Wendy Hall CBE, Head of School of Electronics & Computer Science at the University of Southampton, one of the world's leading computer scientists Science Communication Professor Kathy Sykes, who holds the Collier Chair for Public Engagement of Science & Engineering at the University of Bristol, regarded as a leading figure in Britain promoting public engagement in science (regular presenter of BBC's Rough Science and other BBC science/society programmes) Dr Maggie Aderin, Senior Project Manager of Space Science at SIRA Technology Ltd, and runs a public engagement company in her spare time aiming to improve the participation of girls and ethnic minorities in science. Breaking through the Glass Ceiling into Leadership Dr Julia Goodfellow CBE, Chief Executive of the Biotechnology & Biological Research Council, the first female chief executive of any UK research council; Rebecca George OBE, who manages IBM's Central Government Business in the UK and is one of the most senior women in the 25,000 strong company. Her achievements earned her an OBE in 2005.

The supply of scientists and engineers is critical to the UK economy, which is targeting an increase in research and development investment to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2010. Despite forming half of the working population women represent just 24.1 per cent of those working in SET and of all managers, only 12.5 per cent are women. This is an average and hides even more extremes within certain areas such as physics. The recruitment, retention and progression of women in SET are considered intrinsic to future success.

The portrait collection will be exhibited at various public buildings and galleries throughout the UK; exhibiting opportunities include the National Portrait Gallery, Welsh Assembly and Westminster Hall.

A new research project led from ECS will look at how spatial connections can be managed and will use air traffic control as a model.

The ambitious £1.5m, three-year project is called 'Spatially Embedded Complex Systems Engineering' (SECSE). It is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has brought together experts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, geography and complex systems, to understand the role of the spatial organisation and spatial processes in complex networks.

Dr Seth Bullock from the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS), the principal investigator on the project, is working with academics at the Universities of Sussex and Leeds and University College London to look at the possibility of engineering large-scale IT networks based on natural systems.

The researchers will look, in particular, at applying their research to air traffic control systems to understand how to manage air-space so that efficiency, robustness and flexibility can be balanced.

They will also look at issues such as social and geographical networks to understand how academics work together, to identify academic hotspots around the country and to look at how the Internet has changed how individuals collaborate.

They will turn to the human brain and other natural systems for examples of how spatial connections are made. Dr Bullock commented: 'We are interested in the networks of connected neurons but also the space within which those networks are embedded: a chemical soup. The human brain can guide us as to how space and spatial processes can be exploited by a complex network.'

For today's engineers, a key challenge is to manage the network transition from systems comprising many relatively isolated computational elements to large-scale, massively interconnected systems that are physically distributed and affected by local conditions, yet must remain robust and efficient.

Dr Bullock added: 'We are already surrounded by systems that are attempting to achieve this transition: from e-government, the digital NHS and virtual universities, to peer-to-peer communities, grid computing and e-science. Traditional, centralised approaches do not scale to cope with these systems, and as yet we have no established design methodology capable of guiding this type of transition. We believe that our research will change this state of affairs.'

An unusual booklet published this month by one of the UK's leading computer scientists aims to highlight the development of agent-based computing and to illustrate the wide reach of this exciting technology in our everyday lives.

Agents are autonomous problem-solving software systems that respond effectively to changing dynamic environments, and agent technologies already impact on our life and work -- from our household appliances and transport systems, to the operations of companies which provide many of our goods and services.

50 Facts about Agent-Based Computing, produced by Professor Michael Luck of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, presents a high-impact snapshot of how agent-based computing has already transformed processes like automated market trading, logistics, and industrial robotics.

‘Agent-based systems are a basic building block of some of the most compelling developments in IT today, and are already having real commercial impact,’ says Professor Luck, Executive Director of the EU-funded AgentLink programme and co-ordinating editor of its Roadmapping activity.

The booklet features companies and organizations which have successfully implemented agent technologies in their operations, including DaimlerChrysler, Whitestein Technologies, IBM, and the UK Ministry of Defence. Many of the 50 Facts demonstrate that agent technologies can outperform human operators, enable companies to make significant cost savings, and to manage complex processes more efficiently.

For example: autonomous market trading agents already outperform human commodity traders by 7 per cent, and DaimlerChrysler experienced a 20 per cent increase in productivity by using agent-based systems to direct individual workpieces in one of its production areas.

AgentLink, an influential project in the EU Information Society Technologies programme, promotes the adoption of agent technologies across the continent, raising awareness, supporting teaching and training, and liaising with industry. The AgentLink III Roadmap is a strategic document intended to guide the direction of agent-based computing over the next decade.

‘Agent-based computing is here to stay and its use is likely to multiply in the future’ says Professor Luck. ‘But the growing complexity of the interactions in emerging distributed systems means that we need to introduce new dynamic techniques to provide more flexible mediation and management. This is our next challenge. Building control into systems is hard enough, but some of the systems being developed now will have properties that we can’t envisage at the moment. And we don’t want to preclude the very great potential benefits of these new systems by introducing traditional controls that are too rigid.’

50 Facts about Agent-Based Computing is now being distributed widely throughout the business and academic research community in order to promote awareness of agent-based technology and to highlight its applications.

‘Agent technologies that are flexible and effective will help us ensure the maximum success and interoperability of the next generation interactive computing environments,’ says Michael Luck. ‘This little book provides an indication of the extent to which we are already reliant on the technology.’