The ECS Scholarship and Benefits package for undergraduate students is outlined in a new brochure published for Open Day 2008.

The Scholarship and Benefits scheme at ECS is part of the School's determination to pass the additional income derived from tuition fees directly to our students to enhance the whole student experience. This benefits all students in the School and also provides strong incentives to encourage academic excellence.

Students who receive AAA in A levels will be eligible to receive a Zepler Scholarship of £1000 in their first year of study. Students who have taken qualifications alternative to A level will be eligible to receive Scholarships if they are in the top 10 per cent of students in each degree stream. These awards are subject to performance of above 70 per cent in the ECS Semester 1 exams. All these awards are open to all students in the School.

With similar awards in place in subsequent years, it is possible for an ECS student to receive funding of £4000 over the course of a four-year degree.

Other benefits include free books and equipment and careers opportunities.

Full details of the Scholarships and Benefits are on the Scholarships section of our web site.

Generous prizes also exist within degree streams. For example, the top students in Parts 2 and 3 (MEng) of the Computer Science degree stream receive top-of-the-range iPods sponsored by Netcraft, the leading Internet and security company, and this year Imagination Technologies gave Pure DAB radios to the winning team members in the Part 2 Software Design module.

Speaking in Washington last night (14 September), Sir Tim Berners-Lee unveiled an exciting new vision for the next phase of development of the World Wide Web …

…in which research, and the work of the Web Science Research Initiative, would play a central role.

Announcing the formation of the World Wide Web Foundation, to fulfil a vision of the Web as humanity connected by technology, Sir Tim said that the Foundation seeks to enable all people to share knowledge, access services, conduct commerce, participate in good governance, and communicate in creative ways. Crucial to achieving this will be technological innovation, research into the Web as a system, and the application of the Web for the benefit of underserved communities The Foundation will raise funds through a multi-faceted strategy, beginning with a $5 million seed grant over five years from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

‘The Web is a tremendous platform for innovation, but we face a number of challenges to making it more useful, in particular to people in underserved communities,’ said Sir Tim. ‘Through this new initiative, we hope to develop an international ecosystem that will help shape the future Web. A more inclusive Web will benefit us all.’

The World Wide Web Foundation is in the unique position of being able to improve the Web by bringing together existing communities, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders who see the Web as a instrument of creativity, collaboration, and communication. The Web Foundation will pursue its objectives by funding projects around the world in three strategically integrated programs related to research, technology, and social development.

In outlining his expectations of the Foundation’s work, Sir Tim, a professor in ECS, emphasized the importance of Web Science as an area of study, involving multidisciplinary research into the analysis and engineering of the Web itself.

‘In 2006 I helped to set up the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) [a joint initiative between Southampton and MIT] to facilitate and produce the fundamental scientific advances necessary to inform the future design and use of the World Wide Web. We are now working with a growing number of colleagues around the world to develop the academic infrastructure for this new field.’

One aspect of this research will be to ensure that the future Web supports ‘the basic social values of trustiworthiness, privacy and respect for social boundaries that are so critical for connecting people.’ Other important areas of future work will involve mobile computing and eGovernment.

Calling for significant collaborative efforts worldwide Sir Tim said that the Web Foundation is in the unique position of being able to learn from the results of projects to accelerate the evolution of the Web. He concluded: ‘The Web is a platform like a piece of paper. It does not determine what you will do with it, it challenges your imagination.

‘Our success will be measured by how well we foster the creativity of our children. Whether future scientists have the tools to cure diseases. Whether people, in developed and developing economies alike, can distinguish reliable healthcare information from commercial chaff. Whether the next generation will build systems that support democracy, information the electorate, and promote accountable debate.’

Group Secretary Maggie Bond is the first member of ECS staff to be fully settled into her new office in the Mountbatten Building.

Maggie was in the advance party of key staff and researchers who are the first to move into the new Building, which has been planned since late 2005 and under construction since January 2007. 'I'm delighted to be here at last,' she said, 'and feel very settled.'

The £55M Mountbatten Building provides four floors of complex clean rooms, labs, offices and research space for the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. Its facilities and equipment are state-of-the-art, and will provide new opportunities for the University's research in nanotechnology and photonics.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, paid tribute to all members of the School and to members of the University for the hard work that has gone into making the new Mountbatten Building such a successful reality. 'There have been many milestones in the construction process over the past few years,' he said, 'but this is the most meaningful. Now that staff are actually in the Building all our plans take on a new reality and we can begin to see a very exciting future.'

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi has received the 1st Publishing Achievement Award from the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Professor Al-Hashimi has edited IET Computers and Digital Techniques for the last five years, during which time it has gone from strength to strength. Professor Al-Hashimi relaunched the journal to reflect emerging and new trends in System-on-chip; low power embedded computing systems and CAD tools. As a result the submission rate has increased significantly and the journal is now recognized as one of the leading journals in the field.

The IET Award recognized Professor Al-Hashimi's 'vision, energy and technical expertise with awareness of the emerging topics'. His strong international standing in the research community and the world-leading work of the Electronic Systems and Devices group in ECS of which he is a member has grown confidence in the journal and encouraged its greater prominence.

'Of course I am delighted that I am the recipient of the 1st IET Publishing Achievement Award,' said Professor Al-Hashimi, 'and look forward to move the journal forward to establish it as the journal for choice for researchers worldwide to publish their new research results in the area of computer engineering.'

For the second year running an ECS dissertation on computerised agents has won the BCS Distinguished Dissertation Competition, indicating that agents are becoming a reality.

It is also the second year in a row that a researcher from the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has won this annual award, which is presented by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC), in conjunction with the British Computer Society (BCS).

This year's winner, Dr Talal Rahwan from ECS, has developed new algorithms to enable greater co-operation between agents.

He calls this interaction 'coalition formation' which allows autonomous agents to group and co-ordinate their activities efficiently so that they achieve their individual or collective goals.

‘Forming effective coalitions is a major research challenge in the field of multi-agent systems,’ said Dr Rahwan. ‘Central to this endeavour is the problem of determining which of the possible coalitions to form in order to achieve the goals of the system. Our algorithms significantly outperform previous ones in terms of execution time, solutions quality, and memory requirements.’

Last year's winner, Dr Rajdeep Dash also from ECS, examined the role of agents in the way auctions are used to manage supply chains.

Professor Nick Jennings, Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group at ECS, who supervised both dissertations, said: ‘The fact that dissertations on autonomous agent-based systems have won the British Computer Distinguished Dissertation Competition two years running is firm evidence that our agents are leaving the laboratory and are ready to be used in industry. We are now moving towards practical devices that support the effective co-ordination and formation of teams of first responders in major disaster response scenarios.’

An example of where agents are being developed for use in disaster management scenarios is the ALADDIN (Autonomous Learning Agents for Decentralised Data and Information Networks) project (http://www.aladdinproject.org/) which is now well under way and in which ECS is a partner.

The dissertation award selects the best British PhD/DPhil dissertations in computer science and publishes the winning dissertation and runner up submission on the BCS website. The prize winner will receive his award at the 2008 BCS Roger Needham Lecture, at the Royal Society in London, on 12th November.

The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory has launched a new website which emphasizes both the breadth of its research and its commercial testing capabilities.

The Laboratory combines a wide range of academic research projects in the area of solid and liquid dielectrics, with a repertoire of commercial testing and similar services for the electrical power industry.

The new website is designed to provide information about the growing number of research projects taking place within the Laboratory and to make it easier for prospective postgraduate students and interested commercial parties to find relevant information and contact details.

The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory is an integral part of the Electrical Power Engineering research group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science and represents an excellent example of the synergy that is possible between academic research and commercially driven development.

Around 350 new students arrive in ECS this week to join undergraduate and MSc programmes and to take part in the ECS JumpStart programme.

The ECS JumpStart programme is intended to introduce students to the School of Electronics and Computer Science, to the University Campus and the City of Southampton, and to their new fellow students. It involves a mix of meetings, challenges, and social events and allows students to find out enough about the School to enable them to settle better into the routine of lectures and classes.

JumpStart is sponsored by IBM. It is being run this year by Teresa Binks, a second-year student in Computer Science, and Sean Nuzum, who graduated from ECS this summer with an MEng degree in Electronic Engineering. Around 50 current undergraduate students are also involved in acting as student mentors throughout the week.

'We're delighted to welcome so many high achieving students to the School,' said Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of ECS. 'They join the School at a particularly exciting time, with the new Mountbatten Building almost completed, and a whole new range of opportunities likely to emerge during their time here.'

The University semester begins next Monday, 6 October.

ECS graduate and Professor, David Payne, Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre, has won the 2008 Marconi Society Prize and Fellowship.

Professor David Payne is an internationally-distinguished photonics researcher and fibre optic pioneer, who was selected for this year's Prize for his pioneering work in the field of fibre optoelectronics and fibre telecommunications, the backbone of modern high speed data transmission.

He received the $100,000 prize at a special annual awards dinner held at the Royal Society on Friday 26 September. Of the many and major advances developed by Payne's research group, the best known is the invention of the erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA), a type of optical amplifier on which rests the whole basis of our fibre telecommunications systems. This unique invention overcame the problem of transmitting data over large distances, a process which even when using highly transparent fibre, requires some degree of amplification.

Payne, 63, was born in England, but brought up in Africa, and returned to England to attend university. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical power engineering at the University of Southampton in 1967 and became that institution's first graduate student in the new optoelectronics research program. His work helped establish the Optoelectronics Research Centre as one of the leading fibre optic research facilities in the world and he joined the faculty as a professor of photonics, a position he has held for 40 years. He became Director of the ORC in 1995.

Says Payne: "I was incredibly fortunate to be offered the opportunity to work as one of the first in optical telecommunications. It created the high-speed connected world and its outstanding success has been one of man's greatest achievements. Without optical fibres and amplifiers it is hard to imagine the internet we know today."

Among the numerous awards and honours Payne has received are the top American, European and Japanese prizes in photonics. He has been honoured with the UK Rank Prize for Optics, the IEEE Photonics Award (the first awarded outside the USA) and more recently he was elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences as one of only 240 foreign members. Earlier this year, he also received the Millennium Prize.

Payne, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering, lives with his wife Vanessa in Hamble, Southampton.

Professor Wendy Hall, in her role as President of the Association for Computing Machinery, will address the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Colorado this week.

A number of leading women from industry and academic life will take part in the conference to illuminate the significant role that women play in creating and utilizing technology to improve world conditions.

Wendy Hall will be participating in a panel on European Women in Science and Engineering on Friday 3 October, as well as a session on ACM's Membership Gender Study and how to meet the dynamic needs of women in computing.

Professor Hall took over as President of the ACM earlier this year, the first person from outside North America to be elected President. ACM is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women is being held in Keystone, Colorado, from 1 to 4 October.

A new algorithm developed by ECS researcher Dr Edith Elkind can be used to predict political power balances.

In a paper entitled: 'Manipulating the Quota in Weighted Voting Games' published in the Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference, Dr Elkind and her co-authors describe how a mathematical model developed to describe voting in a parliament can facilitate decision-making among groups of computerised agents.

'Agents tend to form coalitions in much the same way as political parties,' she said. 'So I thought it would be interesting to look at what would happen to the balance of power if you change the number of votes needed to make a decision.'

In the paper, Dr Elkind, who is part of ECS’s Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group, illustrates that the power of a political party is very much dependent on whether bills are passed by a simple majority (50 per cent of all votes) or a qualified majority (two-thirds of all votes).

She believes that the same is true of autonomous agents, and that by applying the model to these scenarios, possible outcomes can be predicted.

'We can quantify the change in the balance of power caused by changing the voting threshold, like requiring a two-thirds majority to pass a bill rather than a 50 percent majority.'