With only one week of term left, undergraduate and MSc students in ECS were able to take time out of a hard term's studying to enjoy the School Christmas Party.
The Christmas Party was organized by the Electronics and Computer Science Society, the School's own student society which organizes social events, academic and careers talks, and has an active sports programme.
Around 400 students attended the party, held in the Staff Social Centre, with entertainments from the Circus Society, the Breakdance Society, Kinki DJs, and of course Santa Claus, in the person of Alex Horn, 2nd year Computer Science student.
The University has awarded Oxford Instruments a contract for £2.5M for nine process tool systems to be used in the Mountbatten Building clean room.
The new research complex in the Mountbatten Building will serve the world-leading research of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. Completion of the new building is anticipated for summer 2008, when the Oxford Instruments tools will be sited within it.
The nine systems will provide leading-edge capabilities in the research and development of novel nanoelectronic, MEMS and photonic devices. The order includes both plasma etch and deposition tools, with two Plasmalab®System100 ICP etch tools, two Plasmalab80Plus open-loading RIE tools and two PlasmalabSystem100 PECVD tools, plus a number of Oxford Instrumentsâ newest products: a FlexAL® plasma/thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) tool, a Nanofab nanowire and nanotube growth tool, and a large-chamber Ionfab® ion beam system.
Andy Matthews, Managing Director of Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology, comments: 'We are extremely proud to have been awarded this order by the University of Southampton and to be able to further our relationship with the University. This is a very significant order for us, not only commercially, but also as an endorsement of Oxford Instrumentsâ position at the forefront of providing high quality, innovative process tools which are enabling the next generation of electronic and nanotechnology devices.'
The latest newsletter from ECS provides a perspective on a year in the life of the School, drawn from the blogs written by undergraduate students.
Entitled When Everything Connects (pdf), the newsletter highlights the major event of the University year, starting with the JumpStart induction week in October, running through intensive coursework in Semester 1, exams, house-hunting, more exams!, Finals, Graduation, and summer study before the year begins again.
The ECS undergraduate bloggers are a diverse group, covering all the main subject streams: Computer Science, Electromechanical Engineering and Electronics, and all the different year groups. Chris Jensen joined the School this year from Norway, Norhidayah Azman is from Malaysia, and Ian Gilham took the Foundation Year before entering a course in Computer Science.
Life isn't all plain sailing and some of the accounts written by the students demonstrate the extent of support which students in the School are able to access as they go through an intensive and often challenging degree course.
But in the end, hopefully everything does connect, and as Emma Burton writes: 'ECS ... is certainly a force to be reckoned with!'
A new MSc programme in Artificial Intelligence is now recruiting students for October 2008. The course provides a wide view of the challenges and solutions in this exciting area.
The new MSc programme aims to deepen studentsâ interest and to provide a wide view of the challenges and solutions that exist. It is research-led and incorporates both traditional and state-of-the art aspects of AI and Machine Learning, opening the path to many different subject areas and technologies.
âArtificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are becoming ever more prevalent in our society, â says Dr Craig Saunders, Joint Course Leader. âIn the context of AI, people often think of computer programs that play chess, or a futuristic world where advanced humanoid robots walk among us. This type of robotics is perhaps far distant, however, in reality, AI and machine-learning techniques are already widespread.â
Web search, weather prediction, financial forecasting and 'personal recommended items' on shopping and music websites are just a few examples where the technologies are already employed and familiar to millions of people. Dr Saunders also instances state-of-the-art research in bio-informatics and chemo-informatics where proteomics and genomics are benefitting from novel algorithms, as well as spam filtering, opponent AI in modern games such as HALO 3, and of course, robotics.
âThere is already a diverse range of applications for these technologies, says Dr Saunders. âAlthough each of the domains requires specific techniques to deal with its unique demands and requirements, the commonality between them is that in each case we want some sort of automated decision that seems âreasonableâ? or âintelligentâ? by an agreed measurement.â
The course enables participants to study the fundamentals of all aspects of intelligent algorithms with the freedom to choose options and specialise where desired. Topics in the course cover a skill base which is in very high demand from the academic research community as well as a wide range of industrial companies covering sectors from biotechnology to finance.
2008 will be a year of welcome change and development in ECS as the School prepares for the opening of the new Mountbatten Building.
As work proceeds with rapid pace on the building's striking external finishing, contractors are busy inside on the complex workings that will control the clean room environments. The £55 million building, which is due for completion in July 2008, will provide a world-class facility that will allow the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) to make leading-edge contributions to new research areas in nanotechnology and photonics.
The state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary facility has been designed specifically to meet the long-term research needs of ECS and the ORC, and contains a large purpose-built clean room and associated laboratories, along with offices and meeting spaces.
'The technology which will be available in our new building, 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,' said Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of ECS.
This year's Multimedia Conference presents talks, demos and posters on Multimedia Storage and Retrieval; Multimedia Networking; Distributed Multimedia Information Systems; and Multimedia Content Creation and Applications.
The Conference is held as part of the third-year Multimedia course for students on the Computer Science and Information Technology in Organisations degree programmes. The students are expected to organize the event and run it as a proper conference, showcasing their own work.
Dr David Millard is one of the course leaders: âThe ECS Multimedia Conference is concerned with technology that influences our everyday lives,â he saysâ, âincluding the future of digital and internet television, games and virtual worlds, and new methods of collaborative working, learning and sharing. The conference is a great opportunity for students to discuss the technological challenges and explore how we may live in the future.â
This yearâs conference is sponsored by JP Morgan, who will also be providing the keynote address. The event takes place on Thursday 17 January, from 4 pm until 10 pm, in Zepler Seminar Rms 1 and 2, and food and refreshments will be provided.
All students and staff in the School are warmly invited to attend.
A new edition of a student textbook, Digital System Design with VHDL, by ECS academic Professor Mark Zwolinski, has just been translated into four languages.
Published by Pearson Education, the book develops the idea of combining a text on digital design with one on VHDL.
VHDL is one of the two main hardware description languages used to design digital systems. Professor Zwolinski is writing a new version of the book to cover the latest version of the other language, SystemVerilog, to be published in 2009.
'When the first edition of this book was published, the idea of combining a text on digital design with one on VHDL seemed novel,' said Professor Zwolinski. 'The book has now been adopted by several universities as a core text.'
'Digital System Design with VHDL' is intended as a student textbook for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
'It has often been assumed that topics such as VHDL are too specialized for second year teaching and are best left to final year or postgraduate courses,' said Professor Zwolinski. 'There are several good reasons why VHDL should be introduced earlier into the curriculum. With increasing integrated circuit complexity, industry needs graduates with knowledge of VHDL and the associated design tools. If left to the final year, there is little or no time for the student to apply such knowledge in project work.'
'Digital System Design with VHDL' has now been translated into Polish, Chinese, Japanese and Italian.
Rachel Burnett, President of the British Computer Society visited ECS at the invitation of the School's ECSWomen group.
Rachel Burnett spoke about her term as BCS President to an audience of students and staff in ECS and Law. Her talk 'BCS - this year's focus: activities, achievements and networks', sparked lots of lively discussion with regards to IT Law, the BCS and gender issues.
The meeting was hosted by ECSWomen, a new group which has just been set up this academic year, in conjunction with the Southampton branch of the British Computer Society. This is the first branch of the BCS in the UK to have affiliated a student chapter.
Two members of ECS academic staff have recently served as President of the BCS: Professor Wendy Hall (2004-5) and Professor Nigel Shadbolt (2006-7).
A new MSc programme in Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will equip graduates with the skills needed to fill the high demand in sectors from biotechnology to finance will be available this year.
The MSc which will be offered by the University of Southampton's School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) in October this year, builds on the School's flourishing MSc programme which this year attracted a record 145 students. The School has also just witnessed its largest Computer Science undergraduate intake since the dot-com crash.
The new MSc in Artificial Intelligence is research-led and incorporates both traditional and state-of-the art aspects of AI and Machine Learning, opening the path to many different subject areas and technologies.
âAI and Machine Learning are becoming ever more prevalent in our society,â said Dr Craig Saunders, Joint Course Leader. According to Dr Saunders, millions of people are already familiar with some of the scenarios where AI technologies are already employed, such as: web search, weather prediction, financial forecasting and 'personal recommended items' on shopping and music websites.
âThere is also much potential for these techniques in bio-informatics and chemo-informatics where proteomics and genomics are benefiting from novel algorithms; as well as spam filtering, opponent AI in modern computer games, and of course, robotics.â said Dr Saunders.
The course will enable participants to study the fundamentals of all aspects of intelligent algorithms with the freedom to choose options and specialise where desired. Topics in the course cover a skill base which is in very high demand from the academic research community as well as a wide range of industrial companies covering sectors from biotechnology to finance.
âThe school has been very active in this area and conducting world-class research for some time and has many researchers working in various elements of Artificial Intelligence, including Intelligent Agents, Machine Learning, Game Theory, Evolutionary Algorithms, Complexity Science, Biometrics and Machine Vision among others,â said Dr Saunders. âWe have had a strong AI component to our undergraduate degree for many years, with many students electing to focus on this aspect in their third year project, including the recent success of Richard Jones and LastFM who used collaborative filtering techniques to recommend music to listeners.â
New technology to enhance digital map technology is being presented by an ECS academic at the Electronic Imaging conference in California this week.
Dr Jonathon Hare from the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) will deliver a presentation entitled 'MapSnapper: Engineering an efficient algorithm for matching images of maps from mobile phones', at the Electronic Imaging conference taking place in San Jose, California, USA, from 27-31 January.
Dr Hare, who carried out this research in conjunction with Professor Paul Lewis at ECS, will describe how he and his team developed MapSnapper, a robust algorithm to enable mobile phone users to take a photograph of a section of a map with a camera phone and have returned to them a high quality photograph of the section with points of interest added which the user can investigate further by clicking on them.
âThe vision was a product that would allow users to query a remote information system based on photos of a paper map taken with a camera phone,â said Dr Hare. âThe information system could then return useful information to the user via the device. For example, the returned information could include such things as events, facilities, opening times and accommodation in the selected geographical area.â
Dr Hare will describe how the algorithm combines a number of computer vision techniques, including interest point extraction and local description generator with multidimensional indexing. The outcome of this research is a fast robust algorithm which enhances the quality of mobile digital technology.