Speaking on behalf of the Council for Science and Technology, Professor Wendy Hall of ECS has called for a 'step change' in the way that early career researchers are seen by employers and funding bodies.

Commenting on proposals just published by the Council for Science and Technology (CST)on how to make research a more attractive career option, Professor Wendy Hall said that a clear career structure was needed for researchers, and they should be given more independence at an early stage in their career.

Professor Hall has been a member of the CST since 2004. She was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science from 2002 to 2007 and is currently Senior Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

In the news release issued on 9 October 2007 by the DIUS, Professor Hall is quoted as saying:

“The UK’s science base is one of the best in the world and it will be crucial to maintain it for the continuing success of the economy. Research funders and the higher education sector must work together to provide a clear career structure, and give researchers greater independence at the early stages in their careers.

“This is not just about maintaining an excellent research base in the universities. The majority of PhD students and postdoctoral researchers will leave academia and go on to make as great a contribution in business, education, the media or public services. We must make sure they have skills that are required, and that these are duly recognised.

“We are very encouraged that the Research Councils and Universities UK are now leading revision of the Concordat on behalf of the sector to support the career development of researchers, and taking this issue seriously. This is an excellent opportunity for a step change in the way that early career researchers are seen by their employers and funding bodies. CST’s report sets out some proposals that could be adopted as part of this initiative.â€?

Another significant milestone has been reached in the reconstruction of the Mountbatten clean room. The Head of School, Professor Harvey Rutt, has just signed off orders for some key pieces of equipment that will support the research to be carried out in the new complex.

The total value of the equipment purchased is £6.6M (including VAT) and includes 11 items of equipment. The most significant equipment is the Jeol JBX 9300 FS electron beam lithography system, which cost £3.3M. It is used to write very small patterns in resist, with an ultimate resolution below 10nm, making it a very important tool for top-down nanotechnology research.

The equipment order also includes a package of deposition and etch equipment, which is used to deposit thin layers of semiconductors and insulators and to etch patterns that have been written by the e-beam lithography system. The etchers include two ICP etchers, one for metals and one for oxides, and two RIE etchers.

The two most interesting deposition systems are an OPT Nanofab 1000 and an OPT FlexAl. The Nanofab 1000 grows carbon nanotubes and silicon/germanium nanowires and is an important tool for bottom-up nanotechnology research. Since the existing technologies are about to hit fundamental limits – nanostructures like these may be the way round these limits. The FlexAl is an atomic layer deposition system that is used to deposit very thin layers of material, with thicknesses down to a few angstrom (1 angstrom = 0.1nm).

‘Construction of the new building is continuing apace,’ said Professor Harvey Rutt, ‘but of course it’s the equipment inside it that will enable the research to be carried out under truly state-of-the-art conditions. Professor Peter Ashburn and his team have done an excellent job in specifying these equipment needs and negotiating with the suppliers and we look forward to seeing the equipment in place next spring.’

It is an essential feature of the construction of the new Mountbatten Building that it provides the incredibly clean and ultra-low vibration environment needed for these cutting-edge machines to function.

ECS was strongly represented at the Micromechanics and Microengineering Europe (MME) 2007 conference at the University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal. Five papers were presented, mainly in fabrication:

Fabrication of Fully Functional AC-Electroosmosis Micropump with 3D High Aspect Ratio Electrodes Using Only SU-8, presented by Hamza A Rouabah; Fabrication of Lab-on-Chip Devices from Fluoropolymers, presented by Alan Taberham; Fabrication of Patterned Pyramidal Micromirrors and Current Carrying Wires for Atom Chips, presented by Gareth N Lewis; Fabrication of Macroporous Polysilicon by Using Nanosphere Lithography presented by Chien F Chau; Performance Analysis of a Micromachined Electrostatically Suspended Gyroscop employing a Sigma-Delta Force Feedback,presented by Badin Damrongsak.

The ECS contingent are photographed here at the conference.

MailScanner is being used by Novell as their anti-spam tool of choice in their new 'Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition' software package.

The Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition is a Linux-based desktop-to-server solution tailored to meet the needs of small businesses. It provides productivity tools and a networking infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of alternative, proprietary-only software bundles.

To further help customers reduce cost and improve security, Novell's suite also includes Novell-supported open source components, including MailScanner for spam filtering, Amanda for backup and archiving, the ClamAV anti-virus toolkit, HylaFAX fax server, iptables for firewall, the OpenVPN virtual private network and TightVNC for remote control of network clients. The suite is also supported by popular business software applications certified to work with SUSE Linux Enterprise.

MailScanner is a free anti-virus and anti-spam filter, developed by Julian Field, Postmaster in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. MailScanner protects over 1 billion emails every day and has been downloaded over 1 million times. Version 4.64 of MailScanner was released on 1 October 2007.

Perpetuum, the leading manufacturer of vibration energy harvesting devices, has completed a £5 million funding round backed by Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF), Quester, and Top Technology. The investment is to be used to support Perpetuum in commercialising its vibration energy-harvesting generator.

Perpetuum’s micro power generator is the world’s first truly practical vibration-harvesting device capable of generating enough power to enable wireless transmission of large amounts of data. Energy harvesting is considered a key enabler for wireless sensor networks, which are becoming increasingly important in a variety of areas including industrial monitoring and control, rail transport, and shipping. Perpetuum’s novel energy source generates electric current from the energy of low levels of vibrations as they are present, for example, on standard electric motors common at industrial sites. Harvesting power locally makes the sensor nodes independent of the use of batteries or mains power and drastically reduces installation and maintenance cost.

The current round of investment has been led by ETF. It will be the second investment from ETF’s new fund, which was launched last year with a target size of 150 million euro. Both Quester and Top Technology were previous shareholders of Perpetuum and have taken up pre-emption rights.

Mike McTighe, Chairman of Perpetuum said, ‘Our generator is already being built into sensor node designs by some of the world’s leading industrial condition monitoring companies. There is no comparable device on the market today and we have a great opportunity to position Perpetuum as the global leader in this fast-growing market. We are very pleased to have ETF as an investor, and to welcome Henrik Olsen of ETF to the board.’

Henrik Olsen, a founding Partner of ETF added, ‘Perpetuum has developed a novel alternative energy source that harvests energy otherwise wasted and renders batteries unnecessary. By enabling wireless sensing it will significantly improve industrial efficiency. Perpetuum is a great example of the type of company we would like to support – it has a market-ready, universally applicable product that can make a real difference in a rapidly growing market. It has an excellent management team, enjoys great customer interest and is poised for significant growth.’

The original research behind the Perpetuum products was carried out in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, by Professor Neil White and colleagues in the Electronic Systems Design Group.

The School was strongly represented at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration in Florida, by a contingent of 10 ECS researchers led by Professor Wendy Hall, last year's winner of the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award.

The Grace Hopper Celebration is an annual event organized by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology , and designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the world's largest annual gathering of technical women in computing.

The ECS contingent is pictured here: Left to right:  Kate Macarthur, Mair Allen-Williams, Reena Pau, Professor Wendy Hall, Claire Pass, Despina Zenonos, Valanto Kousetti, Ilaria Liccardi; sitting - Clare Hooper, Jane Morgan

Dr Kieron O'Hara, Senior Research Fellow in ECS, discussed new ways for Information Communication Technology (ICT) to bridge the digital divide, at a conference in Portugal on 30 October.

Dr O'Hara, who is based in the ECS Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia research group, presented a paper entitled Digital Divides and Web Science at the Lisbon Research and Policy Workshops on Science, Technology and Social Change, organised by the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union, which took place at the Portuguese Communications Foundation, Lisbon on 29-30 October.

In his talk, Dr O'Hara called for a better understanding of how ICTs can accelerate bridging the digital divide in the future. He argued that there is not one 'digital divide' but actually several divides, between young and old, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and so on.

Furthermore, much depends on what computers can, or should, be used for: communication, or personal use, or to play a full part in community life. He made this argument in a recent well-received book 'inequality.com'.

Dr O'Hara also suggested that Web Science, the study of the Web from several different angles, which is the main focus of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) a joint research collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an important part of the effort, combining as it does, science, social science and engineering.

ECS has experienced the largest increase in its Computer Science intake since the dot-com crash. Ninety-four new CS undergraduates joined the School - 20 per cent more than last year.

The intake is also 20 per cent more higher than in 2006. According to Dr Paul Garratt, Senior Admissions Tutor, Computer Science, this is very good news for the industry and signals a renewed interest in mathematics and physics and an endorsement of computer science as a route to extremely lucrative careers such as management consultancy, finance and IT.

‘Employment prospects for computer sciences graduates in Europe and the USA are better then ever, he said. ‘It is not unusual for a graduate to start out on £35,000 in what is now an extremely healthy job market.’

ECS graduates are employed by some of the world’s major IT employers such as Microsoft and Google and IBM.

The School’s popularity in computer science was highlighted earlier this year when students gave the highest rating in the UK to their courses (average 4.5 out of a possible 5), scoring aspects such as teaching, assessment and feedback, academic support, organisation and management, learning resources, personal development, and overall satisfaction.

According to Dr Garratt, the combination of electronics and computer science at ECS and the state-of-the art facilities under construction in the new Mountbatten Building are also factors which account for this year’s increase.

ECS welcomed a total of 270 undergraduates, 144 MSc students and 65 PhD students this academic year.

The topping-out of the Mountbatten Building took place under clear skies on Friday 2 November, marking the fact that the building has reached its highest point.

The £55M new building, a state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary facility designed specifically to meet the long-term research needs of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre, contains a large purpose-built clean room and associated laboratories, along with offices and meeting space.

The topping-out was carried out by Dame Valerie Strachan, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Southampton and Chair of Council, who was accompanied by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Bill Wakeham, David Amos of Bovis Lend Lease, Project Director of the new building's construction, and Graeme Forbes, Head of Bovis Lend Lease Technology. Also present were project managers White Young Green/Trench Farrow; and the design team headed up by IDC.CH2M Hill, with architects Jestico + Whiles and structural engineers Gifford.

Professor Wakeham reminded guests that it was exactly two years since he had addressed a joint meeting of staff and researchers in ECS and ORC the day after the fire which destroyed the previous building, when he pledged that the University would rebuild and that the new building would be better than what had existed before. David Amos said that the construction project had been a privilege to work on and he was excited about the next stage of the building's construction which would see some stunning results as some of the more visual aspects of the building's design were revealed.

Dame Valerie symbolically smoothed concrete into the final post on the building's roof and the building was toasted with champagne by the guests, who included representatives of the many contracting companies involved as well as members of the University, ECS and the ORC.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, last month signed off an order for £6.6 million worth of equipment for the building, which will facilitate more in-depth nanotechnology research. The most significant equipment is the Jeol JBX 9300 FS electron beam lithography system, which cost £3.3M. It is used to write very small patterns in resist, with an ultimate resolution below 10nm, making it a very important tool for top-down nanotechnology research.

‘Construction of the new building is continuing apace,’ said Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, 'but of course it’s the equipment inside it that will enable the research to be carried out under truly state-of-the-art conditions. This, coupled with our high-quality academics, students and support staff, will enable us to develop faster, smaller, lower-cost, lower power, more environmentally-friendly devices for the next generations of electronic products whilst continuing our pioneering work in computer science.’

ECS research fellow Dr Rajdeep Dash has won this year's Distinguished Dissertation Prize, awarded by the British Computer Society, for his PhD on computerised agent systems.

Dr Rajdeep Dash has been selected by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC), in conjunction with the British Computer Society (BCS), as the winner of the Distinguished Dissertation Competition 2007. He will receive his award at the 2007 BCS Roger Needham Lecture at the Royal Society in London on Tuesday 13 November. Although this competition has existed since 1990 this is the first time that a Southampton researcher has won the first prize.

Dr Dash’s dissertation entitled Distributed Mechanisms for Multi-Agent Systems: Analysis and Design uses techniques from game theory to design markets that allocate resources (such as energy and bandwidth) and control the flow of information in sensor networks.

‘There is an increasing need for computer systems that operate a decentralised control regime, and that contain a number of components representing distinct, agile stakeholders with different aims and objectives,’ said Dr Dash.

‘Within the systems I have developed, I have designed new auction protocols which could change the way auctions are used to manage supply chains by incorporating more information such as trustworthiness, capacity and information elucidated from competitors.’

Dr Dash’s PhD thesis was supervised by Professor Nick Jennings, Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia group in ECS, who said: ‘This thesis is an excellent example of what a PhD should look like. It has made foundational scientific contributions and shown how these can be used in practice for an important class of real-world problems.

‘The technical contribution lies at the intersection of economics (game theory) and computer science, which is one of the most exciting areas of research for the next generation of decentralized information.’

The annual dissertation award selects the best British PhD/DPhil dissertations in computer science. Over 20 submissions were received covering a wide range of research topics and after a rigorous review process involving international experts, the judging panel selected three dissertations that were regarded as exemplary, from which the winner was chosen.

Professor Roger Hubbold, Chair, CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Competition said of this year's competition: ‘The high standard of the dissertations is a testament to the excellence of computer science research in the UK- long may it continue!’