2009 began with a splash with the news that Professor Wendy Hall had been appointed DBE in the New Year Honours List, for services to science and technology. Dame Wendy’s prestigious appointments continued during the year. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in May, and received the Duncan Davies Medal from the Research & Development Society in October.

In February ECS was visited by Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation. With a PhD in robotics, Lord Drayson was especially interested in a display of student projects on robotics, including the Formica swarm robots which were built in the School’s Biologically Inspired Robotics course, and the Student Robotics challenge, which students run in sixth form schools and colleges in Hampshire.

National Science and Engineering Week in March saw an innovative new type of event for schoolchildren, devised and organized by ECS PhD student Reena Pau. ‘Blood on the Kitchen Floor’ was a murder mystery event in which children and families solved a set of clues using University laboratory facilities to unmask the murderer of a celebrity chef. The event helped the University win the national accolade of ‘Best Engineering Event’ during the Week.

In April it was revealed that MailScanner, the email security and anti-spam system developed and managed in ECS by Julian Field, had achieved global reach by protecting email in every country in the world – ‘from the Vatican State to the United States, from North Korea to the South Pacific,’ as Julian commented.

Team Tarka, the first-ever UK entry in Solar Splash, the World Championship of Intercollegiate Solar Boating, put up a spirited challenge in June, coming away with a string of awards and a very creditable 10th place in the event. Team Tarka was led by Dr Peter Wilson of ECS and the team members in Fayetteville, Arkansas, were Dirk De Jager, Karim El-Shabrawy, and Rich Bowen.

Over 200 students from ECS received their degrees at University Graduation ceremonies in July, with the majority of them having found jobs. It was announced in June that the School’s 2008 graduates had done outstandingly well, with 95 per cent of them in graduate jobs or training within three months of graduating.

In August the University of Southampton became the first in Europe to receive the Charles Babbage Grant from Synopsys Inc. John Chilton, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Strategic Development at Synopsys, attended a ceremony in ECS to formally open a new lab for virtual learning and to meet with students and faculty.

Professor Ian Diamond, Chair of Research Councils UK, was principal guest at the first Open Day at the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, held on 9 September. Over 200 guests from business and research were able to tour the new facilities, hear about the latest research advances in nanotechnology, and to meet staff of the Centre.

The first-ever internationally designated Open Access Week (19-23 October), provided an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research and to celebrate the successes achieved by the Open Access movement, within the global research communities and the world’s higher education institutions. It also marked the adoption of the 100th OA mandate. ECS is one of the world leaders in OA research and policy.

In November Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt briefed the UK Cabinet on their work on making government data more open and accessible. The work had begin in June at the invitation of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In December Nigel Shadbolt was asked to lead a panel of experts to oversee the release of local public data.

The ALADDIN project ended the year on a high-note when it received the Aerospace and Defence Award in The Engineer Technology and Innovation Awards. The judges called ALADDIN, led by Professor Nick Jennings, ‘a stunning collaboration’ with one judge remarking that the project ‘truly captures engineering’.

These successes are only a few of the 130 news stories featured on the ECS web site – you can read them all on our news pages, with some of the coverage of our news also available.

Join us again in 2010 for more coverage of the School, our students and researchers, and our achievements.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453

An iPhone application which acts as a personal assistant for University of Southampton students has received 750 downloads over the last few weeks.

iSoton, designed by ECS Electronic Engineering student Francois-Xavier Beckers, provides a personalized lecture timetable, automatically downloading individual lecture times and locations. Students also have quick access to a campus map of University buildings and lecture theatres and to the city bus schedules.

Francois, who is in his third year in the School of Electronics and Computer Science and comes from Belgium, had the objective of making the application as simple as possible and quick to use. iSoton is free to download from the App Store, and a demo is available on YouTube.

iSoton also has its own Facebook Fan Club.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Over 100 students graduated with University of Southampton degrees at today's Graduation ceremony for the School of Electronics and Computer Science, held in the Turner Sims Concert Hall on campus.

The majority of the ECS students had taken the MSc degree over the academic year 2008-9. After the ceremony a reception was held in the Mountbatten Building for the new graduates, families and friends.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of School, who presented the students for their degrees, said: 'A degree from the School of Electronics and Computer Science represents a considerable achievement, involving intensive study, especially on the MSc degree, and the understanding of a wide range of technologies. We congratulate our students on their achievements and look forward to remaining in touch with them in the future.'

All today's photos are available to view and download on the School's Photo Archive.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

The future of 3D television, lifelogging, the implications of the Pirate Bay judgement and augmented reality in education, are just some of the topics on the agenda at this year’s Multimedia Conference, MC10, which takes place on Saturday 9 January.

The conference is organized annually by undergraduate and MSc students taking the Multimedia Systems course in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Planning and running the conference is an important aspect of the coursework, and the event follows the conventions of an academic conference, with submissions, reviews, conference sessions, and posters. This is the eighth conference in the series and the programme looks like being one of the most lively and ambitious so far.

The keynote address will be given by Raeeka Yassaie, Graduate Recruitment & Education Liaison Officer at Imagination Technologies, who will be talking on ‘Designing Tomorrow's Multimedia Technologies’, and providing an overview of the current market for multimedia technologies and future trends, including some that will form part of the conference agenda.

MC10 takes place in the Mountbatten Building on the Highfield Campus and opens at 11 am with presentations throughout the day until 5 pm. There are a limited number of free places available for the conference; further information is available on the Conference Registration web site.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO THE WEATHER CONDITIONS. WE HOPE TO REARRANGE IT FOR A DATE IN THE FUTURE.

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An event taking place next week at the University of Southampton brings together noted experts from public life to tackle the debate surrounding privacy and identity.

The debate is important because in our increasingly complex and connected lives, issues such as identity theft, the fragility of digital information, the availability and use of private records and the huge amount of personal information on the Web, all pose a threat to our security and wellbeing.

What can we do about this? How can our personal records be kept safe? Is the Data Protection Act adequate? What is the role of the law? How can IT security keep pace with technology? – These are just some of the questions likely to be raised by the audience next week and argued by a distinguished panel of experts, brought together by the Web Science Trust and the Bathwick Group.

Members of the public are invited to attend the event, which will follow a 'Question Time' format, on Tuesday 12 January at 5.30 pm in the University’s Nightingale Lecture Theatre, and to contribute to the discussion. Admission is free of charge and no tickets are required, but questions from the audience can be submitted in advance here.

The Panellists are:

• Simon Davies is one of the world's best known and most experienced privacy advocates. He is founder and director of Privacy International, a London-based human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations.

• Tim Kelsey is Chair of the Executive Board of Dr Foster Intelligence, the UK's leading health and social care informatics organisation. The company, a joint venture with the NHS Information Centre, is a public-private partnership committed to improving the accessibility, coverage and use of intelligent information among frontline care professionals.

• Liam Maxwell is a Councillor and the Lead Member for Policy and Performance at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, where his brief includes Information Technology. His background is as an IT Director in Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 business service companies.

• Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science. In 2009, he was appointed by the Prime Minister as a government information advisor alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee to transform access to Government information.

In the Chair will be Jonathan Steel, Chief Executive of the Bathwick Group.

The event is part of the Bathwick Group’s ‘Connected World’ series and is held in conjunction with the Web Science Trust, NESTA, and the University of Southampton.

All are welcome.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0) 23 8059 5453

As temperatures drop below freezing and demand for energy soars, engineers at the University of Southampton have launched a new iPhone application to monitor the UK electricity grid.

Dr Alex Rogers, Dr Perukrishnen Vytelingum and Professor Nick Jennings at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have developed an application, named ‘GridCarbon’, which when downloaded to an iPhone, enables users to monitor the carbon intensity of the grid – the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when one unit (1 kWh) of electricity is used by a consumer.

“The app shows people how using appliances and machinery at different times of the day can reduce their carbon footprint; for example, at some times of the year, running washing machines and dishwashers overnight rather than at peak times in the evening, can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 40 per cent,â€? said Dr Rogers. “While developing this app, we were surprised at how much the carbon intensity of the grid varies at different times of the day, and between different days in the week.â€? The application, which can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store by searching for ‘GridCarbon’, is just one initiative being developed by ECS researchers as they develop a vision of the Smart Grid.

They are currently researching the use of computerised agents to operate smart electricity meters in support of the Government’s initiative to have smart meters in all homes by 2020, and are using a new building on the Southampton campus as a test bed. The Ideas Project web site has more information.

“We are developing agents that can ‘learn’ how much energy a building or home uses and which can then make predictions and decisions about cost-effective energy use,â€? Professor Jennings added. “We have already proved that agents can be used to haggle and resolve conflict, trade on the stock market and cope with disasters; our next challenge is to incorporate them into smart electricity meters.â€?

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453

IT Innovation Centre, the School's applied research centre, has teamed up with Pinewood Studios to demonstrate the next generation of film and TV production.

In an action-packed day the MUPPITS team showed how a near-live production (the kind of thing produced for a news insert or review) could be shot in various locations, use visual effects from a separate post-house and be edited somewhere else again, with all the content handled as files and the file transfers managed by an automated system under the control of the producer.

Visitors to the demonstration, representing a wide range of professionals from the media industry - from producers and directors to special effects companies and equipment manufacturers - watched as a mock news item was created about the BBC's research facility at Kingswood Warren in Surrey, including a live interview with the former head of technology, animated graphics and other shots edited into a complete piece that they could see delivered over a network connection and played out in the auditorium in Pinewood.

IT Innovation manager Paul Walland says: "Visitor response was ecstatic with comments such as 'This will bring an immense benefit to post-production operators'. There were a lot of questions from the audience, the most common theme being 'When can I start using MUPPITS in my own productions?' and 'How is this going to work commercially?'.

"These are the questions that IT Innovation are setting out to answer in the final phase of the MUPPITS project," Paul added, "continuing their close liaison with industry leaders Pinewood Studios, the BBC, Smoke & Mirrors and Molinare. IT Innovation are aiming to change the face of movie making for ever ... Wow!"

IT Innovation is the lead technology partner in MUPPITS. Their primary role is development of a service-oriented business and lifecycle management architecture, which supports the management of the content production lifecycle of film and television using tapeless workflows. The project is co-ordinated by the Digital TV Group, and other partners are BBC, HDDC, Molinare, Ovation Data Systems, Pinewood Group, Smoke & Mirrors and Sohonet.

MUPPITS is a two-year R&D project supported by the UK Technology Strategy Board.

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

A new kind of information processing technology inspired by chemical processes in living systems is being developed by researchers in the School of Electronics and Computer Science.

Dr Maurits de Planque and Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) are working on a project which has just received €1.8M from the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiatives, which recognises ground-breaking work which has already demonstrated important potential.

The researchers, Dr de Planque, a biochemist, and Dr Zauner, a computer scientist, will adapt brain processes to a 'wet' information processing scenario by setting up chemicals in a tube which behave like the transistors in a computer chip

“What we are developing here is a very crude, minimal liquid brain and the final computer will be ‘wet’ just like our brain,â€? said Dr Zauner. “People realise now that the best information processes we have are in our heads and as we are increasingly finding that silicon has its limitations in terms of information processing, we need to explore other approaches, which is exactly what we are doing here.â€?

The project, entitled 'Artificial Wet Neuronal Networks from Compartmentalised Excitable Chemical Material', which is being co-ordinated by Friedrich Schiller University Jena with other project partners, the University of the West of England, Bristol and the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, will run for three years and involves three complementary objectives.

The first is to engineer lipid-coated water droplets, inspired by biological cells, containing an excitable chemical medium and then to connect the droplets into networks in which they can communicate through chemical signals. The second objective is to design information-processing architectures based on the droplets and to demonstrate purposeful information processing in droplet architectures. The third objective is to establish and explore the potential and limitations of droplet architectures.

“Our system will copy some key features of neuronal pathways in the brain and will be capable of excitation, self-repair and self-assembly,â€? said Dr de Planque.

For further information, see the article on this story by Jason Palmer on BBC Technology Online.

Posted by Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.

Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond took time out from filming in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre (SNC) to visit the School's Computing Lab.

Hundreds of students were in the Lab last Friday (8 January) waiting to see Richard Hammond, and the scale and warmth of his welcome can be seen in this video on YouTube. The presenter was visiting the School of Electronics and Computer Science to film sequences for a new BBC/Discovery Channel series, called "Invisible Worlds", which is scheduled to be aired in March. He filmed in the SNC clean room with Professor Darren Bagnall, Dr Harold Chong, Dr Nic Green, and Dr Stuart Boden, demonstrating the incredible power and precision of the SNC equipment which can etch features in silicon at a scale of 5nm.

While he was visiting the Computing Lab he was presented with an ECSS hoodie by the student committee of the Electronics and Computer Science Society (ECSS). Further pictures are available on the School's web site (ECS login only).

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Thirty-six leading graduate recruiters will be attending the ECS Engineering and Technology Careers Fair on Tuesday 2 February.

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 annual Careers Fair is being held for the third time, in response to demand for our students from business and industry. Over 1000 students attended last year's event, and so this year's Fair, on Tuesday 2 February, is already hotly anticipated.

The event takes place in the Garden Court, Students' Union, on the Highfield Campus, from 11 am to 3.30 pm and is open to all students in the University, with a particular emphasis on engineering and science degrees. As well as graduate recruitment opportunities, the companies will also be offering summer internships and industrial placements. The company representatives will be available at their exhibition stands throughout the day, and there is also a special programme of presentations.

Companies attending include: Accenture, Atmel, ARM, Bloomberg, Centrica, Corefiling, Credit Suisse, Customer Systems, Detica, Dstl, Ernst & Young, FactSet, Flight Data Services, Gradcracker, Graduate Jobs South, IBM, Imagination Technologies, Invensys, JP Morgan, MatchTech, Mendeley, Netcraft, NDS, Orbis UK, PG Drives Technology, QinetiQ GRC, Roke Manor Research, Selex Galileo, Sperry Rail, STR, Symantec, Tandberg, TeachFirst, Thales UK, Waterfall Solutions, and Wolfson Microelectronics

All are welcome.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453.