New design tools which will improve the way that embedded software systems are designed are being developed as part of a multi-million Euro project led by researchers at ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

These tools will be applied to automated railway signalling and smart energy distribution by industrial partners in the project.

Professor Michael Butler of ECS, who leads the Electronic and Software Systems Group, is coordinating the Advanced Design and Verification Environment for Cyber-physical System Engineering Project (ADVANCE), which begins tomorrow (1 October).

The EU-funded ADVANCE project, which involves Alstom Transport, Critical Software Technologies Ltd, Systerel and two universities, Southampton and Düsseldorf, will deliver methods and tools for formal modelling, verification and validation which will make it possible to produce precise models for embedded systems and help eliminate design errors before projects go into the manufacturing stage. The project will run for 30 months.

“Critical infrastructure, such as railways and energy distribution, rely on large complex software systems, but software design errors are expensive to fix and can have a detrimental impactâ€?, said Professor Butler. “We are producing formal modelling and verification tools so that system designs can be tested earlier and improvements made before any commitment is made to the final design,â€? he added.

“Formal modelling and verification can significantly improve the quality of the system validation processâ€?, said Jose Reis, Principal Consultant Engineer at Critical Software Technologies. “Formal methods improve the quality of the analysis phase by forcing the systems engineer to analyse a broader space of problems.â€?

In ADVANCE, the consortium will use a software toolkit, named RODIN, which is open source and was initially developed in the EU FP6 Rigorous Open Development Environment for Complex Systems (RODIN) project 2004-2007 and the EU FP7 Industrial Deployment of System Engineering Methods Providing High Dependability and Productivity (DEPLOY) 2008-2012.

The major impact of the ADVANCE methods and tools will be to reduce the cost associated with formal modelling and verification while increasing the benefits obtained. This will provide a competitive edge to European systems engineering companies, allowing them to further strengthen the leading position of Europe in the development of high-quality embedded systems.

The University of Southampton is one of six universities in the UK which will be hosting this year's 'Silicon Valley comes to the UK' appathon event.

Silicon Valley comes to the UK (SVc2UK), announces a month-long, multi-site competitio. Dubbed the SVc2UK Appathon, the competition supports and encourages university students to use government data to "hack" together innovative consumer applications in Healthcare, Education, and the Environment. This competition allows students to unlock the power of government data to make a positive social impact and to enhance the data's accessibility to peers, parents, and grandparents. This ambitious initiative represents the UK's largest ever mobilisation of students to create apps. We don't know yet what they will create, but we are hoping for a 'good school's guide’ where you can find out where the good schools are near you, a 'good doctor's guide’. where you can find a doctor near you, and a 'clean city guide' where you can find the cleanest city near you - or the dirtiest!

This national ‘coding competition’ helps to address the void that organizers believe exists in most university curricula, creating a real world opportunity for those developers with the ambition, appetite and aptitude to code and build applications that can have real value to users. With support, not only from their peers, but the wider technology community, and a network of mentors, these students will be able to take control of, and enhance, their own education outside of the classroom and make a difference.

Continuing the historic success of SVc2UK, approximately 1,500 students from 15 universities across the UK are expected to be drawn “like magnetsâ€? to six UK locations including Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton and London to take part in the Appathons. Full access to the data and details of participating universities and hosts can be found here.

The SVc2UK Appathons will run during early October and are open to university students across the country. The competition has the full support of Downing Street, which will supply technical guru’s from data.gov.uk. In addition, pretty much the whole technology industry is lending support to the effort. University students who enter the competition have until 23 October to submit their apps to be judged by leading global entrepreneurial icons including Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito and more.

The winners of the SVc2UK Appathon will attend an awards ceremony in November as part of ‘Silicon Valley comes to the UK’ and 9 winners will be invited to take part in a road trip to Silicon Valley followed by the legendary South by Southwest Conference early next year. The Appathon will conclude with winning developers, coming to London, for the finale: a show-and-tell event where the developers will explain and demonstrate their efforts to a selected audience of their peers, politicians, advisers, civil servants, and the press.

Prime Minister David Cameron says: "Silicon Valley comes to the UK is one of the most important inward investment events of the year, bringing leading Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors together with British technology companies to spark new connections and investments. As I've said before, I am committed to making the UK the best place in the world to start, run and grow a high tech company. That's why we have introduced more generous tax breaks for early stage investment, accepted the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property, launched the Entrepreneur Visa, as well as a host of other policy changes. A key part of this technology agenda is our commitment to open data. Over the past 18 months we have set a huge amount of government data free, and we are committed to going even further in the months ahead.

"I warmly welcome the news that Silicon Valley comes to the UK is organising a competition to reward the creative use of government data. This type of innovation can produce new applications and services that generate significant social and economic benefits, and I'm looking forward to seeing the entries sent in by coders across the UK."

Professor Nigel Shadbolt of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and co-founder of data.gov.uk and Transparency Board Member, comments: "One of the reasons we make Government Data openly available is to create the conditions for innovation. I have no doubt that this programme of events will see remarkable applications emerge - applications that will showcase not just our data but the talent of our students."

University students have until 23 October to show what they can do, but applications to attend an appathon (including the Southampton event, hosted by ECS), are open now and developers can start coding.

Apply to participate in one of the SVC2UK appathons - including Southampton!

This is the first time that Southampton has taken part in this annual competition. The Southampton appathon for Silicon Valley comes to the UK takes place on Saturday and Sunday 15 and 16 October, and will be hosted by ECS-Electronics and Computer Science in the Zepler and Mountbatten Buildings on the Highfield Campus.

Chris Gutteridge is a member of the organizing committee: "We are expecting a really lively event", he says, "and we know that there are a lot of people on campus who are already working with open data and creating apps - we are looking forward to meeting you all at our Appathon! But the event is open to everyone who is keen to see the value of open data and to work on ways that it can be used to create really valuable information." A team of mentors will also be on hand to provide advice and support to all the teams.

Sign up for the Southampton event on 15 and 16 October.

For further information contact Chris Gutteridge (Appathon organization) or Joyce Lewis (media).

Every year ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton employs a number of its own students to work as interns over the summer vacation, participating in research projects and affiliated to one of the ECS research groups.

Over the summer months, Stuart Barrow (MEng Electronic Engineering Part 4) has made a valuable contribution to a pioneering EPSRC-funded energy harvesting project. Stuart has been developing an ultra low-power system that analyses vibrations and transmits them wirelessly. This is useful for machinery condition monitoring, since sensors can be installed on pieces of equipment to provide early detection of problems (so that maintenance can be carried out). The photo shows Stuart testing his system on a car engine – the hardware on the engine is detecting vibrations, processing them, and transmitting them wirelessly to a laptop computer.

Dr Geoff Merrett commented: “These opportunities for summer internships are great for the students, as it allows them to apply the things that they have learnt to real electronics projects in a research environment, and great for the University as interns make very real and valuable contributions. This has been the second year that I have employed Stuart on an internship, and the skills and knowledge that he has developed during his degree have made him a very valuable part of the research teams.â€?

Stuart has been working for three months under the EPSRC-funded Next Generation Energy-Harvesting Electronics - Holistic Approach project, which is directed by ECS Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi. The project is developing efficient vibration energy harvesters, power conditioning electronics, and computation circuits. The system Stuart has developed will soon be self-powered (being powered by vibrations as well as sensing them).

The Holistic project joins up three different research fields, including energy harvesting and MEMS processing methods, low-power embedded computing systems, and electronic design automation. The project is focussing on three interlinked themes (microgenerator design, computation circuits, and system optimisation), and involves over 25 people at four academic institutions.

Eight ECS students spent the summer working with some of the UK’s leading electronics employers after winning scholarships from the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF).

The UKESF is a collaboration between industry, universities and the public sector, which aims to promote the future of the UK electronics sector by addressing the threat of diminishing skills capability and specifically by securing a sustainable supply of high-quality industry-prepared students. The UKESF works at both school and university level to provide summer schools and a high-level scholarship programme that offers bursaries, mentoring and work placements.

The first scholarships were awarded earlier this year to students at the seven universities that are founding members of the UKESF, and ECS students did particularly well, with eight successful in the programme. This year the UKESF is extending its scholarships scheme with more bursaries and work placements on offer. The closing date for applications is 31 October 2011.

The ECS students who were awarded scholarships and work placements are: James Imber (Imagination Technologies); Matt Lokes (Imagination Technologies); Fergus Macgarry (Imagination Technologies); Adam Malpass (Dialog Semiconductor); Samuel Hipkin (ARM Ltd); Yannik Hopke (ARM Ltd); Matthew Warnes (ARM Ltd); and Thomas Dell (Aptina Imaging). The UKESF scholars also took part in a summer school (see photo).

Founding University partners of UKESF are: Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Imperial College London, Edinburgh, Surrey, and York.

Find out more about the Scholarship Scheme at http://www.ukesf.org/scholarship-scheme

Read Adam Malpass’s blog to find out about his summer in Japan: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/blogs/adam_malpass.php

Read about Adam Malpass, Matt Lokes and Tom Dell on the UKESF website: http://www.ukesf.org/scholarship-scheme/scholars-profiles

“We fully support the aims of the UK Electronics Skills Foundation and value highly the opportunities created for students,â€? says Professor Neil White, Head of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science. “ECS has a long history of engagement and collaboration with UK industry and we are very pleased, not only that our students have done so well in the UKESF Scholarships programme, but also that we have the UK’s highest employability rating* for graduate employment of electronics students.â€?

*Unistats 2011: http://unistats.direct.gov.uk

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

The complicated network of trails – which can be traced backwards and forwards in time and space – are the subject of Professor Luc Moreau’s inaugural lecture next Wednesday (19 October).

Professor Moreau, of the Web and Internet Science research group in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, is a leading expert in Provenance, an important area of computer science which makes a crucial contribution to issues of trust in computer-generated data by helping users understand the origins of data. Provenance is important in many fields – for example in forensic analysis of computer trails of information (surrounding issues of financial affairs and fraud), in health and medicine (the health and history of organs for transplantation), in science (the reliability of scientific data and the reproducibility of experimental results and observations), and in art, which has long been familiar with the idea of provenance, but which is now just as reliant on computer information for the history of objects, their previous ownership and validation.

Professor Moreau is co-chair of the Provenance Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). He initiated the successful Provenance Challenge series, which saw the involvement of over 20 institutions investigating provenance inter-operability in three successive challenges, and which resulted in the specification of the community Open Provenance Model (OPM).

Previously, he led the development of provenance technology in the FP6 Provenance project and the Provenance Aware Service Oriented Architecture (PASOA) project. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. He is currently co-investigator of the Orchid, PATINA (Personal Architectonics Through Interactions with Artifacts), and e-stats projects.

“Understanding where data comes from will enable users to decide if it is trustworthy,â€? says Professor Moreau. “This will also lead to a new generation of services over the Web, capable of producing trusted information.â€?

Professor Luc Moreau will deliver his inaugural lecture on Wednesday 19 October on the subject: ‘Research in trails – a trail of my research’. The lecture takes place in Nightingale Building (67) on the University’s Highfield Campus at 5 pm, with refreshments available from 4.30 pm. The lecture is open to the public (no tickets required) and all are welcome.

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

Read the Lecture Abstract

Prizewinners for academic performance in Parts 1, 2, and 3, of degree programmes in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science attended a lunch in the Mountbatten Building to receive their prizes.

New prizes awarded this year were the Winton Capital Management Prize awarded to Liam De Valmency, for best performance in Part 1 Computer Science, and the Barclays Capital Prize, awarded to Doug Moore, for best performance in Part 1 Information Technology in Organisations.

The full list of prizewinners was:

Part I Electronic Engineering EE Zepler Prize: Aditya Tandon GD Sims Prize: Toan Nguyen Quoc

Part II Electronic Engineering EE Zepler Prize: James Imber GD Sims Prize: Matthew Brejza Eddy Herman Memorial Prize: Matthew Brejza

Part I Computer Science and Software Engineering Winton Capital Management Prize: Liam De Valmency

Part II Computer Science and Software Engineering Detica Prize: Robert Streeting Adam Rutherford Memorial Prize: Darie Patulescu IBM group software engineering project Prizes: Dexter Lowe, Emem Adegbola, Christopher Kirkham, Antonio Bernardo Best individual contributions: Andrei Petre, Nicholas Hatter

Part I Electrical and Electromechanical Engineering EE Zepler Prize: Wei Chin

Part II Electrical and Electromechanical Engineering The National Grid Company Prize: Xinnan Wang

Part I Information Technology in Organisations Barclays Capital Prize: Douglas Moore

Part II Information Technology in Organisations Zepler Prize: Manol Dimitrov

Part III Electronics and Digital Systems Engineering Zepler Prize: Yannik Hopke GD Sims Prize: Adam Malpass John Betts Communications Prize: Yannik Hopke

Part III Computer Science and Software Engineering NDS Prize: Stephen Tuttlebee Netcraft Prizes Stephen Tuttlebee Alexander Davenport Raymond Mo Jonathan Harrison Elliot Salisbury Joshua England Sam Lewis Ali Al Marhubi David Monks Andrew Baker

Part III Project Prizes

Hursley Computer Prize: Sukhjinder Plaha David Barron Prize: Peter Wesson NATS Project Prize: Neil Howarth Zepler Project prizes: Yannik Hopke, Raymond Mo, Elliot Salisbury Siemens Prizes: Neil Howarth, Peter Wesson, Yannik Hopke

Winners of the UKESF (UK Electronics Skills Foundation) Scholarships also attended the lunch and received a small gift from ECS for their achievement: James Imber; Matt Lokes; Fergus Macgarry; Adam Malpass; Samuel Hipkin; Yannik Hopke; Matthew Warnes; and Thomas Dell.

Special mention should also be made of Neil Howarth, who was the only Southampton student to reach the final of the European SET Awards this year for his project: ‘Telemetry for electric vehicles’, supervised by Dr Peter Wilson of the Electronics and Electrical Engineering group in ECS.

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

Open Data logged another step in its progress to make the world more transparent, when hundreds of public servants, NGOs, journalists and developers gathered in a former factory building in Warsaw this week for be the world’s biggest ever open data event.

Over 40 countries around the world were represented at the camp, from city level projects in Manchester, Montreal or Munich to national initiatives like data.gov, as well as supranational institutions like the European Commission and the World Bank.

Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Head of the Web and Internet Science research group in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, commented: “Open Government Data creates social and economic value, improves public services, makes Governments more efficient, transparent and accountable. This Conference was about ensuring that more people understand how to make this work, more people can tackle the challenges and obstacles that arise, and more people are inspired to continue the work.â€?

Professor Shadbolt sits on the UK Government’s Public Sector Transparency Board.

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and Digital Agenda Commissioner, commented at the event: “I am thrilled to see so much open data innovation going on in Europe. There is tremendous potential in this area - from enabling next generation public services, to creating jobs in the digital single market. This year's Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw will enable key stakeholders from across Europe to exchange ideas and expertise.â€?

Chris Taggart, Founder of OpenCorporates.com, commented: “Despite the successes of the past few years, the open data community faces considerable obstacles, from proprietary web services to governments who see open data as a threat. Open Government Data Camp will connect people who are serious about overcoming these issues and using open data to help to solve some of the world’s pressing problems.â€?

Professor Dame Wendy Hall received an ‘Internet and Society Award’ from the Oxford Internet Institute as part of its tenth anniversary celebrations which culminated this month.

The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) has become a major centre for the study of the dramatic societal implications of the Internet. The 10th anniversary celebrations provided the OII with an opportunity to recognize the individuals and organizations that have shaped the development of both the Internet and the Institute, and to look to the future. The Awards were presented to individuals and organizations ‘who have developed the Internet for the public good in Britain’.

Professor Hall received her award as being one of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research into Web Science. She was a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative (now Web Science Trust), alongside Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Also honoured were Vint Cerf, Google’s ‘Chief Internet Evangelist’, widely recognized as ‘father of the Internet’; Professor Manuel Castells, of the Open University of Catalonia; Joi Ito, of the Mozilla Foundation; Dr David Clark of MIT, Chief Protocol Architect of the Internet; and Niklas Zennstrom of Skype, Internet entrepreneur.

The Oxford Internet Institute is a part of the Web Science Trust Network of research labs (WSTNet), which links research institutes around the world which are involved in many different aspects of Web Science.

Photographed (standing l-r): Professor Eli Noam, Professor William Dutton (OII), Manuel Castells, Wendy Hall, Vint Cert; (seated) Dame Stephen Shirley, Andrew Graham (Balliol College, Oxford)

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

Two ECS students have been nominated as finalists for the prestigious title of ‘Scholar of the Year’ by the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF).

Tom Dell and Adam Malpass, both in the final year of the MEng degree programme in Electronics at ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, were awarded scholarships earlier this year by UKESF, an organization set up to promote the importance and value of electronic engineering as a university discipline and to help provide a strong supply of electronic engineers for UK industry and manufacturing in the future.

The UKESF scholarships include summer placements with some of the country’s leading manufacturers, as well as providing scholarship funds and a place at a high-level summer school. Tom spent his summer working for Aptina Imaging, and Adam worked for Dialog Semiconductor – both companies are affiliated to the UKESF.

A number of ECS students received scholarships and placements this year, including James Imber (Imagination Technologies); Matt Lokes (Imagination Technologies); Fergus Macgarry (Imagination Technologies); Samuel Hipkin (ARM Ltd); Yannik Hopke (ARM Ltd); and Matthew Warnes (ARM Ltd).

The award for Scholar of the Year will be announced at the annual Gala Dinner of the National Microelectronics Institute, being held in London on Thursday 3 November.

"We are very proud of all our students who have done so well in the inaugural Scholarship event of the UKESF", said Professor Neil White, Head of ECS. "Tom and Adam, as finalists in the competition, provide an excellent indication of the strength of our education in Electronic Engineering at the University of Southampton. Along with all the other ECS students awarded Scholarships this year, they have contributed a great deal to ECS, but also to helping ensure a good supply of electronics students in the future. We know that they will also make a strong contribution to industry after they have graduated."

The next event in the Distinguished Lecture series at the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences goes inside the mind of Watson, the IBM computer which took part in the well-knownn US tv quiz show, Jeopardy! and won ...

Watson is a computer system (devised and built by IBM engineers) which is capable of answering rich natural language questions and estimating its confidence in those answers at a level rivalling the best humans at the task. The intriguing and historic contest took place in February this year when Watson triumphed over the best Jeopardy! players of all time. In this lecture Chris Welty, Research Scientist at IBM's T J Watson Research Center in New York, will discuss how Watson works at a high level with examples from the show.

Chris Welty taught Computer Science at Vassar College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before moving to industrial research. His principal area of research is Knowledge Representation, specifically ontologies and the Semantic Web, and he spends most of his time applying this technology to Natural Language Question Answering as a member of the DeepQA/Watson team.

The Lecture takes place on Thursday 1 December at 5 pm in the Turner Sims Concert Hall on the Highfield Campus of the University of Southampton. No tickets are required and all are welcome.

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