Professor Eric Zepler, the distinguished engineer who founded the University of Southampton's Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Radio Engineering in 1947, was also the UK's first Professor of Electronics.

To honour Zepler's achievements, and to celebrate the history of the School, ECS held the first event today in what will now become an annual series, taking place on Zepler's birthday 27 January. Before taking up his academic post Zepler was already known as one of the world's leading radio designers. His pioneering work on radio systems before the Second World War led to equipment that was used by the armed services of both Britain and Germany during the war. Less well known is Zepler's passion for composing chess problems, which led him to receive the title of International Master of Chess Composition.

On our first Zepler Day on Tuesday 27 January we exhibited two of Zepler's early radios - one built for Telefunken in Germany and the other for Marconi, designed after he came to Britain in 1935 to escape Nazi persecution. Both of these radios are in working order. Professor Greville Bloodworth, who worked with Zepler here in Southampton from 1959, was guest of honour at the event, which also included other retired members of staff who had worked with Zepler, and staff and students of the School. Professor Bloodworth has written: 'Eric Zepler was not only a great pioneering radio designer. In England he became a great teacher. After the experience of being his students or his colleagues, many of us have dealt with engineering design problems by saying to ourselves, consciously or subconsciously, "That can be calculated."'

Dr Thanassis Tiropanis, who joined the School's Learning Societies Lab last year, is interested in using the power of the Semantic Web to link virtual communities.

After undergraduate study in Greece, Dr Tiropanis moved to the UK where he did his PhD at University College London. He then returned to Athens and worked there for a number of years with Athens Information Technology, before deciding that he wanted to develop his knowledge and expertise in e-learning. 'I knew the Learning Societies Lab (LSL) at ECS could help me do that,' he says.

His work in LSL holds many challenges in education and research. For him, one of the greatest challenges lies in the fact that our work and personal spaces are merging and that information gathered in either world is often relevant to the other.

'When I come to work, I bring all my personality and my contacts,' he said. 'We cannot separate our worlds any longer, they are merging.'

For him, the challenge is how this merger between personal and work space can be managed effectively. He believes that the Semantic Web holds the answers and he plans to influence these developments.

Read more about Thanassis Tiropanis and about the Learning Societies Lab.

Profiles of many other researchers in ECS are available here.

This year's Part 3 undergraduate course on Multimedia Systems culminated with a very successful conference held at ECS this month.

The event was organised by the students themselves and was attended by undergraduates, postgraduates and members of the School's academic staff. As well as the opportunity to organise a conference, the event also enables the students to present the results of their research topics.

After a keynote from Dr Les Carr on the use of technology which asked if technology could be used to make people seem smarter ('Does my brain look big in this?'), student presentations included mobile web browsing in the future and an evaluation of Digital Rights Management techniques and effectiveness. During the afternoon there was also a poster session, with posters ranging from the advancement of digital military communication technology, to high definition video.

The conference was sponsored by JP Morgan Chase and Imagination Technologies and representatives of those companies provided demonstrations of latest technology.

'The Multimedia Conference is one of our most enjoyable student events,' said Dr David Millard, who teaches the course. 'It brings together the research and teaching aspects of the School and gives students the chance to participate in a real academic process. For many it is also the inspiration for postgraduate work and their first step to a career as a professional academic or researcher.'

Read more about the Multimedia Systems course.

A networking security tool developed in his Individual Research Project by an ECS undergraduate student was deployed last week at the Cisco Networkers Conference in Barcelona.

The tool, named RAMOND, improves the security and robustness of the IPv6 next-generation Internet Protocol, particularly on wireless networks such as that available at the Networkers conference.

As the availability of IPv4 address space continues to fall - with its exhaustion projected for 2011 - IPv6 will become increasingly important as the means to support a hugely increased number of Internet-connected devices. IPv6 also offers other potential advantages in areas such as autoconfiguration and mobility.

IPv6 autoconfiguration relies on special router advertisement messages on the network. Until stronger IPv6 security is more widely used, it is possible for 'rogue' router advertisements to cause problems for IPv6 devices connecting to networks. If not detected or suppressed, these rogue advertisements can cause laptops or PCs using IPv6 to become incorrectly configured and possibly be exposed to attack. James took an existing project called RAFIXD that was an initial attempt to counter this problem, he worked on the code to improve it, and then developed it into a new more flexible package called RAMOND.

RAMOND can now monitor multiple interfaces, react to multiple advertised- prefixes and is scriptable. It is Open Source, and available to download.

James’s IRP on RAMOND was supervised by Dr Tim Chown in ECS, who has led the School's interest in IPv6 research and deployment for over 10 years. He commented: 'James's IRP was excellent in that he researched IPv6 deployment issues, found a problem that needed an interim but immediate solution, and developed an open source package that did the job. Hopefully a lot of people will benefit from his work.'

ECS students undertake the Individual Research Project in the third year of their undergraduate degree. The project runs throughout the year, and comprises an engineering exercise in which there is scope for flair and originality. The end result will typically be some demonstrable software or hardware, together with a 10,000 word final report. The IRP is an essential component of all degree programmes in the School.

James graduated from ECS last year with an MEng degree Computer Engineering and is now working in the School on other IPv6 projects.

A pioneering stroke rehabilitation system developed by ECS academics has scored two successes: it will receive an award this week and has just received funding for further development.

According to Dr Chris Freeman from the ECS Electrical Power Engineering group, this research could mean that portable, affordable stroke rehabilitation equipment, which patients can use in their own homes, could be developed within five years.

On Thursday (5 February), Dr Freeman and the team will receive an award from the Institute of Measurement and Control (InStMC) for a paper on this system, at the same time as Dr Freeman is awarded a new £285,000 grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop the technology further.

The article, entitled 'An Experimental Facility for the Application of Iterative Learning Control as an Intervention Aid to Stroke Rehabilitation' was deemed the best article to appear in the InStMC journals throughout 2006 and 2007.

'This recognition and our new EPSRC grant are taking us closer to technology that people can use in their own homes. We are taking significant steps to making this a reality,’ said Dr Freeman.

This work builds on the system which was developed by researchers from the University’s School of Health Sciences and ECS to help stroke patients to re-learn movement. The system was trialled on a small group of patients in 2008 to establish its feasibility.

Working with stroke patients, the team applied electrical stimulation to contract appropriate muscles through electrodes attached to the skin which they found could be controlled to enable the patients to successfully perform tasks. They found that those trialled could track a moving target over a two-dimensional plane by moving their arm using a custom-made robotic workstation. The ultimate aim was that through repetition, voluntary movement would improve, thus gradually reducing the need for artificial stimulation.

‘As far as we know, up to now, nobody has tried using a technique called iterative learning control, to help people who have had a stroke to move again,’ said Dr Freeman. ‘This is a great example of how state of the art control theory, normally used for industrial robots, can be applied to challenges in rehabilitation.’

Now, the researchers are taking this research a stage further and plan over the two-year period of the EPSRC grant to expand these technologies to enable the stimulation of more muscles in the arm and hand and more flexible, functional tasks to be performed.

The award-winning paper is: ‘An Experimental Facility for the Application of Iterative Learning Control as an Intervention Aid to Stroke Rehabilitation’, Freeman, C. T., Hughes, A. M., Burridge, J. H., Chappell, P. H., Lewin, P. L. and Rogers, E. (2007) Measurement + Control: The Journal of the Institute of Measurement and Control, 40 (1). pp. 20-23. ISSN 0020-2940.

dr mc schraefel of ECS is working with researchers at MIT on a project that aims to see computers being as easy to use as Post-It notes.

We are all used to seeing office spaces adorned with sticky notes of all colours and illegibility, but the research team, led by David Karger of MIT’s CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab) and by mc schraefel of the ECS Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia group, wondered why the kinds of information-scraps which the notes were used for were staying on paper rather than making it into a computer.

As part of a long-term interaction between ECS and CSAIL, schraefel has been working with different research groups at MIT over recent years. She has supervised students at MIT and students from her research group in ECS have also been able to visit MIT. Among her collaborations is this study of how people use and store information scraps, undertaken with David Karger and his research students.

Researchers in the group, including PhD students Michael Bernstein and Max Van Kleek, undertook a study of the use of Post-Its in an office environment and came up with a number of reasons why the actual physical object of a sticky note would be preferable in certain contexts to a computer program. But they found that one of the main reasons for using Post-Its was ease of use and time taken to make the note.

'Too often the computer gets in the way of what a person wants to do', says Karger. 'That’s right', says schraefel; 'we can quickly jot "meeting at 5 with Max tues" on a Post-It and the job is done; the reminder there.

'But to do this same task on a computer means opening a program, filling in a bunch of fields in a form, navigating an interface to pick calendar dates or time ranges to make it easy for the computer to parse what we mean,' she explained.

'The cost of these actions can be perceived to be too high for the value of the note. So we don’t bother; we lose stuff. We want to eliminate that kind of interaction. Kill the form. Design software to support how we work, rather than have us continue to work for the computer.'

As a result, the researchers developed List.It, a lightweight application to do two jobs: to let people capture notes on a computer as effortlessly as writing a sticky note, and to let the researchers get a better understanding of how people take notes.

List.It is a start at a lightweight interface to capture notes. The next extension of this approach will be to let people use List.It to say things like 'Remind me about this paper the next time I’m with my boss' and have the computer bring up that document at the right time and place. 'We want to explore this kind of lightweight interaction as a way to get the computer to provide more support for less effort', said schraefel.

List.it is available at http://groups.csail.mit.edu/haystack/listit/ (requires Firefox) and users are asked to send in their comments on the code after using it.

dr mc schraefel was recently awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering, sponsored by Microsoft Research, to improve the path to discovery for scientists.

Technology companies will employee graduates this year if they demonstrate exceptional technical and life skills, according to the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

Key recruiters of engineering and computer science graduates who are to attend a Careers Fair at ECS on Wednesday (11 February) say that despite a freeze on all other recruitment in their companies, they will continue to employ graduates this year if they demonstrate these skills.

When a selection of the 38 leading technology recruiters attending this week’s event were asked what they considered to be the top three skills needed by graduates in this economic climate, technical skills and aptitude were closely followed by communication skills and solid demonstrations of commitment and enthusiasm.

'Communications skills are surprisingly difficult to come across,' said Steve Williams, Development Group Manager of NDS, the market leader for single-platform pay-TV operations. 'Such skills are vital for companies operating across different time zones like NDS.'

There was also consensus that a university education alone would not be enough to guarantee employment.

'We need to see more work experience than a one-month internship,' said Jan Reichelt, Founder and Director of Mendeley, a company dedicated to managing and sharing research papers. 'We need evidence of project experience carried out in students’ own time such as software or web development. Pure university skills will not be sufficient to secure a position at Mendeley.' According to Louisa de Lange, Personnel Manager at Roke Manor Research Ltd (part of the Siemens group), only exceptional graduates will be employed this year and she advises early application.

'We are looking for the very best students. Our standards are very high and with fewer positions to fill this year, graduates will have to be exceptional to get a place,' she said. ‘I can’t emphasis enough how important it is for students to draw full attention to their core technical skills when applying – we are looking for truly brilliant engineers.’

Despite the economic downturn, competition among the country's leading technology companies to recruit highly skilled graduates is still hot, and Southampton students have a very strong reputation for the breadth and depth of their knowledge of different technologies, as well as for the strong mix of practical and theoretical understanding gained in their degree programmes.

The ECS Engineering and Technology Careers Fair was held for the first time in 2008, in response to demand from business and industry for ECS students. Over 1000 students attended last year's event.

.......

Contact Joyce Lewis for further information about this story.

Global aerospace and defence group BAE Systems has teamed up with leading universities in a £6m project aimed at developing technologies that will benefit the UK’s emergency services.

Jointly funded by BAE Systems and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the five-year ALADDIN programme (Autonomous Learning Agents for Decentralised Data and Information Networks) involves scientists from BAE Systems and the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Bristol and Imperial College, London. They are developing techniques and technology to overcome the challenges facing different agencies involved in an emergency response.

Using technologies ranging from computer modeling to automated robots, the ALADDIN team has looked at how it can improve the understanding of constantly changing scenarios, where information is rapidly changing and often conflicting, to ensure a more effective response and improve the safety of men and women working in the 'danger zone'.

'We place great pride in developing and investing our skill base and inspiring the future generation through partnerships with educational establishments,' said Simon Case, from BAE Systems.

'The environments our emergency services work in are characterised by uncertainty, ambiguity, imprecision and bias. They involve multiple stakeholders with different aims and objectives and often limited and ever-changing levels of resource.'

'This is highly complex research of wide relevance,� adds Professor Nick Jennings from the School of Electronics and Computer Science, who is leading the research programme. 'To replicate the real-world scenario of an environmental disaster or a terrorist incident, we are taking a total systems view on information and knowledge fusion and considering the constant feedback that exists between sensing, decision-making and acting in such systems.'

The ALADDIN programme is scheduled to conclude its work in October 2010.

Further further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453

The World Wide Web and its future development will be the focus of the first European conference on Web Science to be held in Athens from 18-20 March.

The theme of Web Science 09 is ‘Society on the Web’ and it is the first conference to bring computer scientists, many of whom are from the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) together with social scientists so that they can explore together the human behaviour and technological design that shape the Web and its use.

The conference, which is organized by the Web Science Research Initiative and the Foundation for the Hellenic World (FHW), will also include distinguished keynote speakers such as Noshir Contractor, Joseph Sifakis, Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt.

Web Science acknowledges that the World Wide Web does not exist without the participation of people and organizations; indeed significant proportions of people’s lives are now spent on-line in many countries. The conference will therefore address major issues of people’s behaviour and motivation on-line, their ability to trust websites or agents, their security and privacy. Crucially: how can the design of the Web of the future ensure that a system on which - as Tim Berners-Lee put it – ‘democracy and commerce depends remains stable and pro-human’?

In a keynote address, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, who is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at ECS and also Research Director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), will assert that the Web is a huge powerful machine which is in need of further understanding – crucially as it moves towards a greater fulfilment of Web 2.0 technologies and the development of the Semantic Web. 'The Web connects humanity and can perform lots of initiatives that individuals alone couldn't do, from developing cures for cancer to decoding ancient manuscripts,' said Professor Shadbolt. 'Equally, it is powerful enough to crash an economic system.

‘The Semantic Web will move us into regions as yet unimagined – for example all the information that exists about me will be potentially accessible in just one 'Nigel Shadbolt' search.’

The Semantic Web – or Linked Data Web – will enable information to be gathered from distributed sources, in many different formats, and processed by machines.

‘The sheer abundance of information on the Web means that we will see the emergence of real serendipitous reuse of information – often in new and unexpected contexts,’ said Professor Shadbolt.

Web Science 09 will be held at The Theatron at the Hellenic Cosmos of the Foundation of the Hellenic World.

A press briefing about Web Science ’09 at which Professor Shadbolt and other key conference speakers will be present, will be held in London on Thursday 12 March.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453

The Government's Minister for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, visited the School of Electronics and Computer Science today.

Lord Drayson was in Southampton for the historic meeting of the Cabinet in the City and was able to take the opportunity to visit the University after the Cabinet meeting was over.

In the new Mountbatten Building, a £100M investment in UK science and technology, he toured the clean rooms and labs with Professor Peter Ashburn and Professor David Payne and heard about the new equipment that will enable new research in nanotechnology and photonics.

Lord Drayson has a PhD in robotics, so he was especially interested in a display of student projects on robotics by Rob Spanton, Chris Cross and Adam Malpass, including the Formica swarm robots which were built in the Biologically Inspired Robotics course in Electronic Engineering, and the Student Robotics challenge, which students run in sixth form schools and colleges in Hampshire. He was also able to hear about Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner's research into biochips.

ECS was successful in being awarded two Doctoral Training Centres - in Complex Systems Simulation and in Web Science, and Lord Drayson heard more about these centres from Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, and Dr Seth Bullock.

In a session that included a number of students from science and engineering departments of the University, including Reena Pau, Adam Malpass, Chris Cross, Medhavi Kapil and David Reed from ECS, Lord Drayson was keen to find out about their inspiration in taking science and engineering at University and about their experiences at school.

'We were delighted to able to welcome Lord Drayson to ECS,' said Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Deputy Head of School for Research. 'He was clearly very impressed by the projects he saw here and the prospects for their successful future development.'

For more information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453