WWW2006 took place from 22 to 26 May at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre; the conference was making its debut in the UK. Around 1250 delegates attended, and in a major break from tradition this year the academic conference programme was overlaid by a programme of keynote speakers from digital and web-based industries. The conference chair was Professor Wendy Hall, and co-chairs were Dr Les Carr and Professor Dave De Roure. Many staff in the School have been heavily involved in the organization of the event over the last 18 months.

A major draw at the event was the presence of Professor Tim Berners-Lee, who holds a chair in ECS, and who, along with other members of the School, was prominent in the UK and international media throughout the week. The conference focused on issues which are crucial for the development of the Web, including the mobile web and Semantic Web. Coverage for the themes discussed at the conference included items on BBC News, Sky News, UK and international press, and professional and trade periodicals.

Professor Wendy Hall, Head of School, who successfully brought the conference to the UK for the first time, said: ‘This was the 15th conference in the series and it will be one of the most significant. Not only because it took place in the UK for the first time, but because the World Wide Web is at a crucial stage of its development, and this conference will play a major role in getting that message out to the wider communities of business and users worldwide.’

As part of an unprecedented investment in research and education, the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) will this year award 40 new PhD studentships.

According to Professor Nick Jennings, Deputy Head of School (Research) and Professor of Computer Science, this investment is much more than any other School in the UK will have funded.

‘This is substantially more than we have ever funded in the past,’ he said. ‘Typically, we would fund maybe 10, but this year we will fund four times more and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will fund its usual 10.’

The Mountbatten Studentships, to be awarded from October for a three-year period, are part of a substantial strategic investment in research by ECS, and are primarily geared towards groups within the School which were affected by the devastating fire which engulfed the Mountbatten Building in October 2005. ‘We want to ensure that we recover from the fire even stronger than we were before,’ said Professor Jennings.

‘We have an incredible opportunity to move forward now with new plans and exciting new endeavours. The Mountbatten Studentships are a key part of that investment. But we also hope to be able to guarantee the Studentships for years to come through endowments, which will ensure a continued flow of talented and committed students into these key research areas.’

The new Studentships will have a strong emphasis on electronics and will focus on key growth areas such as nanotechnology and systems design.

‘These awards will revitalise and re-energise our approach,’ said Professor Jennings. ‘They demonstrate that we are now up and running again and seriously investing in our future.’

Notes for editors

1. With the gracious permission of The Countess Mountbatten, the Studentships are named in honour of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who was a former President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and whose Broadlands Archive of private papers has formed part of the Special Collection in the University of Southampton Library for many years.

2. With around 480 researchers, and 900 undergraduate students, the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton is one of the world's largest and most successful integrated research groupings, covering Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronics, and Electrical Engineering. ECS has unrivalled depth and breadth of expertise in world-leading research, new developments and their applications.

3. The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for research and scholarship. One of the UK’s top 10 research universities, it offers first-rate opportunities and facilities for study and research across a wide range of subjects in humanities, health, science and engineering, and has a strong enterprise agenda. The University has nearly 20,000 students and 5000 staff based across its campuses in Southampton and Winchester. Its annual turnover is in the region of £287 million.

The University is one of the country’s top institutions for engineering, computer science and medicine. It is home to a range of world-leading research centres, including the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies.

For information on how to apply for a PhD in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, please go to:

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/admissions/pg/ Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Tel: 023 8059 5453, email:j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Technology which will provide greater access to learning for students with disabilities will be unveiled at Southampton this week.

Researchers from all over the world will gather at the first Liberated Learning Consortium meeting to be held outside North America, at the group’s annual meeting, co-hosted by the University of Southampton and IBM Hursley, to review progress and new developments in speech recognition technology worldwide. The meeting will be held at IBM Hursley on Thursday 29 June and at the University on Saturday 1 July.

A number of new technologies in this field will also be showcased at a public symposium at IBM Hursley on Friday 30 June.

An individual display system that will allow learners to personalise text transcription will be unveiled by Dr Mike Wald, a member of the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS). He will also demonstrate a real time editing prototype that intercepts recognition errors as they occur.

Dr Wald is one of the founding members of the Liberated Learning Consortium which was set up seven years ago to develop ways of using speech recognition to automatically transcribe speech and display it as readable text.

‘This all began with a conversation with Dr Sara Basson from IBM Research about how speech recognition could change the future of classroom accessibility for people with disabilities,’ commented Dr Wald.

‘I knew at the time that speech recognition had the potential to transform access to learning and communication and my collaboration with IBM and the Liberated Learning Consortium has helped turn that vision into a reality.’

At the symposium, IBM scientists will present their work on the development of ViaScribe, the core technology that supports Liberated Learning research. Partners from Hiroshima University will share their experiences about the Japanese education system. Another contingent will talk about the technology’s impact on learning and their efforts to streamline the technical elements in Australia.

Other featured presentations include how the technology is being used in museums and in high school classrooms in Canada, how subtitling for broadcasting is being done using IBM Speech technology, and how wearable computers and head-mounted displays can be used in classrooms.

The Director of IBM’s European Accessibility Center and event sponsor, Julien Ghez, has been instrumental in introducing Liberated Learning into Europe.

He commented: ‘As a founding member of the Liberated Learning Consortium, IBM believes that innovation in this area will lead to great advancements in accessibility on a global scale. Any institution that faces challenges providing access to information for its stakeholders should watch these proceedings closely.’

Ends

Notes for editors 1. For further information about the Liberated Learning Consortium, please visit: http://www.liberatedlearning.com/about/index.html.

For further information, please contact:

Dr Mike Wald, Tel: 023 8059 3667, Email: mw@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Tel: 023 8059 5453, email:j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) has been made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The election was made in recognition of Professor Shadbolt’s contribution to engineering. A Chartered Engineer, Psychologist, President-elect of the British Computer Society (BCS) and Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at ECS, he has engineered systems with practical applications which cross disciplinary boundaries.

Professor Shadbolt is one of 29 individuals elected to join the Academy Fellowship this year along with two International Fellows and three Honorary Fellows, including Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government and Jonathan Ive, Vice President of industrial design at Apple.

‘It is a real thrill for me to have the relevance of my work recognised in this way’, he said. ‘Engineering is everywhere, it’s pervasive and the Royal Academy of Engineering reflects this with Fellows elected from range of disciplines.’

A current example of Professor Shadbolt’s work is the Semantic Web which can be applied to information management challenges in for example the medical, defence and manufacturing industries.

‘The World Wide Web is an example of an exquisitely-engineered system at many levels, one which is constantly presenting new challenges and opportunities’, he said.

Professor Shadbolt has carried out research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science since 1978 and has sought to develop programmes of research across traditional boundaries. His research concentrates on two ends of the spectrum of AI – namely, Knowledge technologies with practical applications and Biorobotics which draws on real animal systems for inspiration.

He has an international reputation for work in Knowledge Technologies and is the Director of an £8 million, six-year research programme (www.aktors.org) that is pursuing basic and applied research in the provision of technologies to support Knowledge Management and realise the promise of the Semantic Web.

‘Engineering is constantly developing’, he said. ‘As we use our hard won knowledge to construct more complex systems and structures, we require new ways to analyse, understand and improve them. Engineering, science and technology have literally built our world and will create our future.’

A Full List of new Fellows elected this year can be found at www.raeng.org.uk

Ends

Notes for editors

1. For further information about Professor Shadbolt and his work, please visit: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~nrs/

For further information, please contact:

Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton (tel.023 8059 5453; email jkl2@ecs.soton.ac.uk)

Professor Nixon's research on gait analysis was featured on ABC News Good Morning America on Thursday 13 July. Further coverage on Sky News is available, along with the Good Morning America video clip, on the School's In the News web site. Further information about research in gait analysis (a biometric of the way people walk), can be found on the web site of the Information: Signals, Images and Systems research group.

Seven members of the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory from ECS led by Dr Paul Lewin recently attended the International Symposium on Electrical Insulation (ISEI 2006) held in Toronto, Canada. Approximately 180 delegates from all over the world attended, and the ECS party formed the second largest contingent. The Conference focused on developments and applications associated with all aspects of electrical insulation and power engineering in the power generation and distribution world. There were 18 oral sessions and one poster session covering diverse topics such as High Voltage cables, transformers, life assessment, partial discharges and electrical materials. Contributions were from industrial and commercial organisations as well as academic institutions. The HV laboratory contributed 8 papers out of the 136 published in the proceedings of which 6 were presented orally and 2 at the evening poster session. The real benefit from the conference was that the research students from the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory could see their work in context and also know that their work is on a level with institutions worldwide. The delegates from ECS were: Dr Paul Lewin, Dr Steve Dodd, Dr Dave Swaffield, Mark Mitchinson, Liwei Hao, Azrul Mohd-Ariffin, Dr Ian Hosier.

An ECS professor of photonics who makes major advances in optical communications by day and gazes at the stars by night, is exhibiting his collection of deep-sky images at the University Library.

Greg Parker, Professor of Photonics at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), will exhibit images of the deep sky captured over the last year from his garden observatory in the New Forest, at the Starscapes Exhibition which will open on Thursday 27 July at the University Library, Southampton.

Looking back billions of years in time and thousands of light years in space, these images of the deep sky are truly awe inspiring.

Greg’s love of the stars in the night sky led him to erect an observatory in his garden in the New Forest. Although he has been star gazing for 40 years, he only started imaging the skies last year.

‘The most amazing two and a half hours of my life (so far) was when I got Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS scope fired up so that I could automatically go to all those objects I’d only read about before’, he said.

‘I can still recall that night of Thursday 2 May 2002 as if it were yesterday. Since that time more amazing things have happened – I got a CCD camera and started deep-sky imaging. Never in my wildest dreams as an 11 year old fascinated by astronomy did I guess that I would be able to take deep-sky images from my own back garden in my lifetime!’

The camera downloads the data which Greg then processes digitally using Adobe Photoshop. This enables him to manipulate the picture and bring out the faint detail. The result is a galaxy of prints that brings the splendours of the cosmos to life.

‘That’s why it’s a great one for me,’ he said. ‘It brings together optics, the stars, photography and the computational processing. It’s got the lot in one hobby.’

Starscapes will run from 27 July to 9 September 2006. All the images in the exhibition are in the fully illustrated catalogue. [pdf]

Ends Notes for editors

1. Professor Greg Parker is Chair of Photonics at ECS. For further information about his work at ECS, his observatory and his Astrophotography, please visit the following links:

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/gjp http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/greg_parker.php http://hometown.aol.co.uk/mobiusltd/myhomepage/photopersonal.html http://mstecker.com/pages/appparker.htm

2. The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for research and scholarship. One of the UK’s top 10 research universities, it offers first-rate opportunities and facilities for study and research across a wide range of subjects in humanities, health, science and engineering, and has a strong enterprise agenda. The University has nearly 20,000 students and 5000 staff based across its campuses in Southampton and Winchester. Its annual turnover is in the region of £287 million.

For further information, please contact:

Professor Greg Parker, ECS, Tel: 023 8059 2650, Email: gjp@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Tel: 023 8059 5453, email:j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

The Year in Focus 2005-6 [PDF], a review of the past year in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, was published last week to coincide with the School’s graduation ceremonies. One of the most momentous years in the history of the School and of the University, The Year in Focus marks the effects of the Mountbatten fire, but also celebrates the huge amount of activity, achievement and success which has been a feature of the School’s response to and recovery from such a catastrophic event. Among the highlights of the year were the establishment of a major new research group – Science and Engineering of Natural Systems (SENSe), the 15th Annual World Wide Web Conference, organized by the School and held in Edinburgh, the award of up to 40 new Mountbatten PhD Studentships, the launch of the first video podcast news service from a UK university, and the naming of Professor Wendy Hall as one of six women who have made an outstanding contribution to UK science. Student contributions to the community, research ‘world firsts’, such as Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner’s robot controlled by living cells, and the Perpetuum vibration-harvesting microgenerator all feature in the review. Looking forward, Professor Wendy Hall, Head of School, reflects on the values of the School which have led to its success over the past 59 years, and sets the scene for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the School, which will be celebrated throughout 2007. Copies of The Year in Focus are available from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (email enquiries@ecs.soton.ac.uk).

Engineers in the School of Electronics and Computer Science have developed a method to make bipolar transistors twice as fast as current devices.

Bipolar transistors are solid state semiconductor devices used in mobile phones and various wireless systems.

According to Professor Peter Ashburn who undertook this research in collaboration with STC Microelectronics, the researchers used a standard silicon bipolar technique with fluorine implants to deliver a record fT of 110 GHz which is twice as fast as the current record.

‘By using fluorine implants, the transistor can operate at a higher frequency which means it will be twice as fast as it was before,’ said Professor Ashburn.

The fluorine implants are used to suppress boron diffusion in the base of the transistor which means that the base width is narrower, allowing electrons to travel across it faster.

‘This means that the electronics industry will be able to achieve better performance at little extra cost,’ Professor Ashburn commented.

Professor Ashburn and his team believe that there is scope to reduce the boron diffusion by a further 50 per cent and they are currently monitoring how the fluorine behaves and looking at whether there are other materials that will also enable this diffusion.

‘We have already beaten the world record,’ commented Professor Ashburn. ‘We have just improved the performance of silicon to a level which was only previously possible with silicon germanium.’

A new lightweight grid is being developed to offer complete security to those who use it.

A computational grid essentially provides a mechanism whereby a collection of computers with processing capability is made available to users with computational tasks to perform.

M-grid, a teaching tool developed by academics at the University of Southampton, provides a system for building a computational grid which allows students to explore the potential of such a vast system without any concerns about security.

According to Dr Stephen Crouch at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), M-grid, which was added to the computer science curriculum last year, allows students to grasp the concepts of grid computing before they move on to a real system.

‘This service for sharing computing power and data storage over the Internet can be installed in minutes and allows students to familiarise themselves with grid technology quickly,’ said Dr Crouch. ‘Because it operates in a “sandboxâ€?, there are virtually no security risks.’

Dr Crouch and Dr Robert Walters, from the ECS Dependable Systems and Software Engineering group (DSSE), are working in collaboration with the School’s Learning Technologies Group (LTG) to develop M-grid further so that it is even more versatile and changes with the needs of the curriculum.

‘Security is a big issue in grid applications,’ said Dr Crouch, but M-grid will allow us to explore some of these issues further in a safe environment.’