Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, OM, FRS, who holds a Chair of Computer Science in ECS, has been named by Intel as the most influential person in technology over the last 150 years.

Intel brought together a panel of experts including academics, journalists and independent third parties to vote on technology’s 45 most influential individuals, in order to celebrate its 45 nanometer (nm) next-generation family of quad-core processors.

In the judging session held in London last month, the panel’s full top ten comprised: 1.Tim Berners-Lee – Founder of the modern-day World Wide Web 2.Sergey Brin – Co-founder of Google 3.Larry Page – Co-founder of Google 4.Guglielmo Marconi – Inventor of the Radiotelegraph system 5.Jack Kilby – Inventor of the Integrated Circuit and Calculator 6.Gordon Moore – Co-founder of Intel 7.Alan Turing – played a major role in deciphering German Code in WWII 8.Robert Noyce – Co-founder of Intel 9.William Shockley – Co-Inventor of the Transistor 10.Don Estridge – Led the development of the IBM computer

‘It’s fitting that the people who have influenced the Internet turn up in the top three of the list,’ said Sean Maloney, executive vice president of Intel. ‘This emphasises the way the world is heading and that the Internet is our industry’s demand driver. As we saw at CES recently, people want an uncompromised web experience. Technologies such as Mobile Internet Devices and WiMAX promise to deliver just that.’

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was appointed to a Chair of Computer Science in ECS in November 2005. In 2006 he became one of the Founder Directors, along with Professor Wendy Hall and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of ECS, and Daniel J Weitzner of MIT, of the Web Science Research Initiative, a long-term collaborative research endeavour between ECS at the University of Southampton and CSAIL at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The School's undergraduate teaching of Digital Signal Processing has benefited from a valuable gift made by Texas Instruments.

The gift to the School of Electronics and Computer Science from Texas Instruments will support and enhance the teaching of Digital Signal Processing fundamentals and filtering in undergraduate Electronics and Computer Science degrees.

Texas Instruments contributed 20 sets of their TMS320C6713 equipment to ECS along with unlimited software support. Dr Matthew Swabey, who teaches the courses in which the equipment will be used, said:

"Programming and experimenting with these engineering development kits will give our students a real advantage in understanding digital signal processing fundamentals along with experience of a cutting-edge real-world digital signal processor architecture."

Robert Owen, Texas Instrument's University Program Manager, visited ECS to see students using the equipment in the Electronics Lab; also in the photograph is Dr Matthew Swabey.

New enhanced PhD Studentships up to the value of £18,000 are being offered for graduate research students beginning PhDs in the School this year.

According to Professor Nick Jennings, Deputy Head of School (Research), the decision to provide these enhanced Studentships is an indication of the importance that the School places on doctoral research. 'The School continues to make a substantial strategic investment in research,' he said.

'As a leading research School we already offer our PhD students some of the best facilities and research training available. We are continually looking at ways that we can increase opportunities for our graduate researchers and this year we have decided to award five Studentships of £18,000 a year over the three years of the PhD and an additional five Studentships of up to £15,000.'

These Studentships are open to UK nationals (or EU students who make the DTA eligibility criteria) and will be awarded to outstanding candidates who apply to undertake a PhD in the School. Applications must be made by 31 April.

Find out more about PhD opportunities in the School on our Research pages and our PG Admissions pages.

Professor Wendy Hall, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt addressed the Royal Society of Arts yesterday (11 March) to celebrate the new science of Web Science.

The three ECS professors are founding directors of the Web Science Research Initiative, a long-term research collaboration between ECS at Southampton and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a video clip on the blog pages of Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, Wendy Hall explains the significance and ambitions of Web Science.

ECS postgraduate student Prins Butt has won runner-up prize in this year’s British Computer Society Comic Strip Competition.

The competition was open to all students studying an IT/Computing course and Prins entered because he thought that it was a good way of introducing students to practical and creative use of IT.

Prins is in his first year of a PhD in Computer Science at ECS, having graduated in 2007 with an MEng degree in Digital Systems Engineering. The inspiration for his comic strip came while he was helping his cousin fix his computer. He told his cousin to ‘Reboot’ the computer and decided afterwards to play a pun on the word ‘boot’.

Prins said: ‘When I entered the BCS Comic Strip Competition the last thing I expected was a reply, let alone being informed that I was a runner-up! For me, I was satisfied with just having the opportunity to have taken part and being able to write this on my CV, so I was very pleased when I received an e-mail congratulating me on my success.’

ECS students reached the University's Intra-Mural Basketball final on their first time in the competition.

The team, comprising Emmanuel Munyadzwe, Richard Kay, Jason Kirk, Deng Yingmao, Wang Yang, Yang Tao, Teng Long Ip, was representing the Electronics and Computer Science Society (ECSS) and achieved third place, after losing to 'Infinity' 21-13, but beating Physoc, 24-19.

'This really helps to overturn the typical stereotypical view of ECSS students as "computer geeks",' said ECSS Sports Convenor Alan Huynh, 'and we'll be back next year with a great chance of winning.

'ECS students are born winners!' he added. 'I'm hoping we can build on this platform and increase our sports activities in the future.'

In a 26-minute interview with BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee talks about privacy, Web Science, and the Web's future.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee addressed the Royal Society of Arts last week on Web Science, the subject-matter which forms the core of the Web Science Research Initiative, a joint research collaboration between the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT.

Sir Tim is a founder director of WSRI, along with Professor Wendy Hall and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of ECS, and Daniel J Weitzner of MIT.

'The Web is a mass of humanity connected by technology,' he said, adding that it was imperative that systems designers should consider the future development of their systems more carefully.

Powerful new ways in which universities are self-archiving their research output are being showcased at the Open Repositories 2008 (OR08) conference, hosted by ECS.

OR08, the international meeting on Open Repositories, is being held at the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton from 1-4 April. ECS, the world's first school to adopt an open-access self-archiving mandate has been a world-leader in the Open Access (OA) movement since its inception.

Repositories play a pivotal role in the evolving scholarly information environment of open access research outputs and scholarly collections. With its theme of Practice and Innovation, OR08 will create an opportunity for practitioners and researchers to share experiences and to explore the challenges of the new scholarly communication.

Participants are also invited to a special conference session on University Open Access entitled The University's Mission, Management and Mandate in the Open Access Era, which has been organised by Dr Les Carr at ECS and will take place on Friday 4 April.

The session will be led by Professor Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University of Liege and Founder of EurOpenScholar, the aim of which is to inform European universities about Open Access and increase the number of European universities with mandatory Open Access policies.

Professor Rentier will describe exciting and innovative ways for EurOpenScholar and the European University Association to work together to push forward the OA agenda in Europe. Other speakers are at this event are Dr John Smith, Deputy Secretary General, European University Association and Dr Alma Swan, Key Perspectives Ltd.

Professor Stevan Harnad, Professor of Cognitive Science at the University and one of the founders of the OA worldwide movement, who will outline the major challenges facing OA, said: 'So far, there have been 39 university and funder OA self-archiving mandates worldwide, including those of Southampton, Harvard University's Faculty of Arts & Sciences, six of the seven UK research councils and National Institutes of Health in the USA and in Italy.'

OR08 will also invite participants to take part in a new Repository Challenge prize activity to produce demonstrations of novel repository capability. The aim is to get delegates working in small teams to try to pull together established platforms and services to demonstrate a glimpse of some real-life, user-relevant scenarios and services. An awards ceremony at the conference dinner will celebrate the achievements of the teams.

PODCAST:126

Teams of young engineers from local schools and colleges will be taking part in the final this Saturday (12 April) of the Student Robotics Competition, organized by ECS students.

The sixth-form students have been working with University students since last October, to produce fully autonomous robots that are able to undertake a series of complex challenges in Saturday’s final. Since there is no remote control allowed, the robots have to drive and direct themselves, find objects and bring them back to base to receive points.

Each team is made up of six students and many of them have volunteered to give up part of the Easter break to get their robots in top shape for Saturday’s competition. The local colleges involved are: St Anne’s School, Southampton; Fareham College; Totton College; Southampton City College; Peter Symonds College, Winchester; and Brockenhurst College.

The event was initiated by a group of Electronics students in the School of Electronics and Computer Science who had themselves been involved in robotics competitions before coming to University. They felt this was a really interesting way to get pre-University students interested in engineering and so undertook to provide mentoring and support in the schools and colleges over a six-month period.

‘All the teams have embraced this fantastic opportunity to take on a great challenge,’ said Stephen English, a final-year Electronics student at the University. ‘Working as a team over six months they have developed a breadth of skills beyond the A level syllabus and we are tremendously proud of their achievements. We are looking forward to a really exciting event on Saturday when they get the chance to show what their robots can do!’

The competition final takes place in the University Students’ Union Building (in a specially constructed arena) on Saturday 12 April, from 10.30 am. The competition takes place throughout the day, with prizegiving scheduled for 4.30 pm.

The Student Robotics Competition has been sponsored by Motorola, the University of Southampton, and the School of Electronics and Computer Science.

It is hoped that this will now become an annual event for local schools and colleges.

The University of Southampton announced a University-wide Open Access mandate at the Open Repositories (OR08) conference last week (4 April).

The University became the first* in the UK to announce that it would henceforth require all academic staff to make all their published research available online. The announcement was made by University Librarian Dr Mark Brown, speaking at the Open Repositories conference which, fittingly, was hosted by the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). In 2001 ECS became the first in the world to adopt a self-archiving mandate.

ECS has been at the forefront of the Open Access movement worldwide, providing tools, data and policy models. The EPrints archiving software which it developed and supports was the first of its kind and is now widely used worldwide, currently supporting 251 known archives with over 440,000 records of research publications.

Professor Stevan Harnad, a founding figure of the Open Access movement, holds a Chair in ECS. He has warmly welcomed the Southampton mandate, as well as a mandate at Stirling University, announced almost simultaneously with Southampton’s, and notes in his blog that the OA momentum is notably gathering force in Europe, with the European University Association (EUA) unanimously recommending OA self-archiving mandates for its 791 universities in 46 countries.

*or second - Stirling University announced its own mandate on 9 April.