An ECS student on the MSc Artificial Intelligence course presented the results of his research project at an international workshop last month.

Hanjie Luo focused his project on a form of fabrication that mimics the formation of biological complexes such as viruses.

He presented his findings on "Selecting Self-assembly Pathways" at the Biological and Chemical Information Technology workshop in Orleans, France, last month.

His research investigated the future manufacturing methods of individual components self-assembling into desired products by making decisions when to bind to another component. There are a large number of possible assembly combinations – intermediate structures - but only some of them will yield a high quantity of the desired structure in a short time. Some of the intermediate structures can hinder progress.

Hanjie developed a software tool based on combinatorial mathematics and physics simulation that predicts which intermediate structures should be avoided, thus helping to optimise the fabrication process.

Hanjie’s project supervisor was Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner, who commented: “Hanjie has worked very hard on his research project and I am delighted that he has been recognised for this work by being invited to present his findings at this prestigious conference.â€?

Hanjie is currently researching at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany, where he was invited to undertake a two-month research visit based on the achievements of his MSc project. During his time in Jena Hanjie will investigate how self assembly can be used for future molecular computing architectures.

"The project is an important aspect of the MSc programme," said Dr Zauner, "and it's great to see what can be achieved by an MSc student in the research-intensive environment of ECS."

Hanjie returns to Southampton in December to attend his MSc Graduation ceremony.

The MSc programme in ECS is a 12-month postgraduate degree programme, which provides the opportunity for students to spend a year studying and researching on an intensive high-quality course at the cutting edge of technology.

An innovative challenge in which the University of Southampton PhySoc helped schoolchildren from St Albans launch their experiments into ‘space’, also included banishing a Minecraft Creeper as far away as possible.

Earlier this year, the University of Southampton PhySoc launched a new PhySoc Outreach Project devised and led by Physics undergraduate Chris Frohmaier, PhySoc Outreach Chair and final-year student on the MPhys with Astronomy. The idea behind the project was to help schoolchildren from St Albans launch their experiments into ‘space’. PhySoc were keen to get the schoolchildren excited about practical science and to inspire them to study Physics at the University of Southampton.

The schoolchildren put their experiments into table-tennis balls which were then launched on a balloon with a tracker designed by Electronics student Matthew Brejza, a member of the Southampton University ASTRA Initiative. Physics student George Winstone also designed an experiment to detect cosmic particles. With the aid of Cambridge University Spaceflight Society (CUSF), the weather-balloon was launched from Churchill College, and tracked throughout the duration of its flight.

The payload also included cameras loaded with CHDK software to take pictures on the way up. “As a group, we saw this as a brilliant time to also launch some of our own personal hobbiesâ€?, said Ben Oxley of the PhySoc Outreach team, “and so a Minecraft ‘Creeper’ and chest were launched.â€?

Although the balloon burst early, it reached a maximum altitude of 23km! It then descended and landed in a field where after some searching it was found still intact and still taking photos!

The Physoc Outreach team is run by dedicated undergraduate students from Physics and other disciplines, who are all passionate about passing on their enthusiasm for science.

ECS alumnus Matt Hobbs was one of five graduates who provided advice and support to ECS students at the first of our new series of Careers Conferences.

The event – ‘Winning the Job you Want: What you need to know about applications, interviews, and corporate culture’, featured leading recruiters Raeeka Yassaie of Imagination Technologies and Sally Cranstone of Lockheed Martin, as well as ECS alumni Matt Hobbs, Simon Kampa, Mike Austin, Carly Wilson and Philip Whittlesea.

Matt, who graduated MEng Electrical Engineering in 2004, has been working for BP for seven years and is one of the Lead Electrical Engineers on a project in Azerbaijan. Matt provided advice on shaping up to competency questions and on assessment centres.

Simon Kampa did both his undergraduate and PhD degrees in Computer Science at ECS, which he joined in 1995. He is now Managing Director of Critical Software Technologies which is based at the University Science Park. Simon spoke on the value of PhD research.

Mike Austin, who did Electronics at ECS and graduated in the 1980s, provided ‘Three reasons not to join a start-up’ – despite the fact that he has recently founded his fourth start-up, Triggered Messaging, which provides digital marketing technology, and is based at the University Science Park.

Recent graduates Carly Wilson (MEng Computer Science 2011), and Philip Whittlesea (MEng Computer Science 2012), tackled ‘What I wish I’d known before I started work’. Carly works for PA Consulting, and Philip joined Snowflake Software in Southampton on graduation.

The event was intended to ensure that our students are best prepared for the application and interview process, for both summer internships and graduate jobs. It was the first event of its kind in ECS and we will be building on its success in the future. Other events are currently taking place to provide information to MSc students on CV preparation, international student visas, and preparing for the Careers Fairs.

The ECS Engineering and Technology Careers Fair takes place on 12 February 2013 and over 50 companies are already booked to attend, with many ECS alumni likely to be on the stands. Places at the Fair can be booked through Joyce Lewis.

The IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) held the Southampton leg of its annual Great Egg Race in the Mountbatten Building this week. This year's challenge was one of the toughest yet.

Teams of competitors had to work out how to pick up an egg off the floor, transport it across a table and deposit it back on the floor on the other side - without damaging the egg in the process.

Six teams took up the challenge of safely transporting the egg. They teams had two hours and a selection of items to use. Amongst these were an electric motor, elastic bands, balsa wood, a plastic cup, thread, a cotton reel, pins and rubber grommets plus tape and blu-tack.

A surprise team from Southampton Solent University emerged at about 40 minutes in, having got lost on the way to the event, this took the total competing teams up to 7.

Throughout the event the teams were assessed by judges on teamwork, communication, design, creativity and quality of the finished product.

The final eggstraordinary contraptions varied greatly across the teams: some adhering more closely to the original requirements whilst others had more free-ranged thinking.

Each team was asked to demonstrate and eggsplain their design to the judges and other competitors with points being awarded by each of the judges.

Despite the difficulty of the challenge all of the teams were able to submit at least a partly working design that could transport the egg (including the Solent team in just over half the time) even if the designs needed a few helping pushes or tweaks along the way.

Eight teams from ECS took part in this year's 24-hour global programming challenge run by the IEEE - IEEEXtreme, running in Zepler Computer Lab from 1 am on Saturday to 1 am on Sunday.

IEEEXtreme is a global challenge in which teams of IEEE student members – supported by an IEEE Student Branch, advised and proctored by an IEEE member – compete in a 24-hour time span against each other to solve a set of programming problems.

Competing for the first time ever, the Southampton teams did remarkably well, with Team SebAliDrian (three second-year Computer Science students) coming third in the UK and 115th in the world. Southampton teams Flaming Snowballs, and Emergent Phenomena were fourth and fifth in the UK, with another four Southampton teams in the UK top 20.

IEEE student branch President, Arinze Ekwosimba, commented: "The IEEE SB Committee is proud of the achievement of all our teams and believes it was the right decision to bring this competition to Southampton for the first time ever.

"Having our top three teams in the UK top five is testimony to the quality of our teams and will definitely serve as a boost to encourage other ECS students to step up to the challenge in coming years.

"The committee worked hard to ensure the only thing teams had to lose was sleep as food, water and music were regularly provided to keep teams happy and focused for 24 hours! I am most grateful to the committee and proctors for the dedication, hard work and sacrifice to be on ground for the entire event."

The Southampton teams went into the competition with prior experience of the IEEEXtreme 24-hour programming competition, but despite the long hours they showed remarkable dedication - the leading ECS team - SebAliDrian answered more questions than other team in the UK.

"We are confident this is only the beginning of a tradition of participation in the IEEEXtreme competition and are already looking foward to hosting and winning the IEEEXtreme 7.0!", said Arinze.

Dr Geoff Merrett, Lecturer in Electronics and Computer Science and Counsellor of the IEEE Student Branch, commented: "This is a great result in the first year that Southampton has entered, and a massive well done to all teams for stepping up to the challenge - they did us proud! An event like this really shows the ability and dedication of ECS students (and lecturers, who gave up their weekend to supervise the event), and i'd like to give a big thanks to everyone involved, including our sponsors G Research and Xyratex. In particular, well done to the Student Branch committee which is formed entirely from ECS students; their determination to bring IEEEXtreme to Southampton this year is a testament to their ambition and professionalism."

The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory (TDHVL) has been growing consistently throughout the past decade. Currently there are 19 staff members and 27PhD students. The quality of work and expertise within the TDHVL means that TDHVL has gained prestige amongst the international research community, which led the TDHVL to be present at the heart of many decision and policy making groups in the area of High Voltage engineering. CIGRÉ comprises more than 2 500 experts on Large Electric Systems from all around the world. Their main objectives are to design and deploy the Power System for the future, optimize existing equipment and power systems, respect the environment and facilitate access to information. Much of the ground breaking work produced by CIGRE is adopted by international and British standards. TDHVL understands the importance of being involved with this and other international councils, which is why many of our staff members and PhD students are directly involved with CIGRE Working Groups (WG). Professor George Chen has considerable expertise in High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) insulating materials, an emerging field in transmission networks. He is the UK representative for the CIGRE WG A2/D1.41 (HVDC Transformer Insulation-Oil Conductivity), and a member of CIGRE WG D1.23 (Diagnostics and Accelerated Life Endurance Testing of Polymeric Materials for HVDC Application). Professor Chen also works with other groups such as the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as an expert member representing the UK in the Technical Committee 112-WG.8 (Evaluation and qualification of electrical insulating materials and systems-Various Material Properties) and a member of the IEEE nano-dielectrics technical committee. Professor Paul Lewin is member of CIGRE Study Committee B1 (Insulated Cables) UK advisory Group, was an invited expert on CIGRE WG D1.33 (High Voltage Testing and Measurement Techniques) and is a UK representative on CIGRE WG D1.48 (Properties of Insulating Materials under very low frequency voltages). The work with CIGRE WG D1.33 has been used to revise the International Standard for high-voltage measurement techniques, IEC 60060-1 and -21.Professor Lewin is also a member of the British Standards Institute PEL42 High Voltage Testing Techniques Committee and the IEEE Condition Monitoring Technical Committee. Professor Steve Swingler is a member of Strategic Advisory Group Meeting for Study Committee (SC) B1 (Insulated Cables) which sets SC policy and considers proposals for new work and Joint Working Group (JWG) (C3/B1/B2) on Environmental Issues of High Voltage Transmission Lines for Rural and Urban Areas. This JWG is addressing issues relating to the processes, procedures and environmental impact assessment needed to obtain permits for transmission lines. In 2006 he was awarded ‘Distinguished Member of CIGRE’ for services to HV cables. Professor Alun Vaughan is also involved with the CIGRE, as a committee secretary for the WG D1.40 (Functional Nanomaterials for the Electrical Power Industry). The aim of this working group is to devise strategies to produce dielectric systems, which enhance current material properties, such as higher breakdown strength for a more efficient energy transfer. Dr. James Pilgrim is the joint UK representative for the CIGRE WG B1.35 (Guide for Rating Calculations), a role shared with Francis Waite of National Grid. The aim of the working group is to create a guide to current rating calculations for the benefit of the high voltage cable community, drawing together different practices from around the world and highlighting the best approach to each problem. TDHVL research staff and postgraduate students are also encouraged to get involved. Alex Holt and Pedro Santo Amaro, working as an RA and a PhD student respectively, on copper sulphide deposition on insulation paper and passivation of insulation paper, are also involved with CIGRE WG A2-40 (Copper sulphide long–term mitigation and risk assessment). Their work is funded by National Grid plc.

Researchers from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton are designing incentives for collection and verification of information to make crowdsourcing more reliable.

Crowdsourcing is a process of outsourcing tasks to the public, rather than to employees or contractors. In recent years, crowdsourcing has provided an unprecedented ability to accomplish tasks that require the involvement of a large number of people, often across wide-spread geographies, expertise, or interests.

The world's largest encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, is an example of a task that can only be achieved through crowd participation. Crowdsourcing is not limited to volunteer efforts. For example, Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) and CrowdFlower are ‘labour on demand’ markets that allow people to get paid for micro-tasks, as simple as labelling an image or translating a piece of text.

Recently, crowdsourcing has demonstrated effectiveness in large-scale, information-gathering tasks, across very wide geographies. For example, the Ushahidi platform allowed volunteers to perform rapid crisis mapping in real-time in the aftermath of disasters such as the Haiti earthquake.

One of the main obstacles in crowdsourcing information gathering is reliability of collected reports. Now Dr Victor Naroditskiy and Professor Nick Jennings from the University of Southampton, together with Masdar Institute’s Professor Iyad Rahwan and Dr Manuel Cebrian, Research Scientist at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have developed novel methods for solving this problem through crowdsourcing. The work, which is published in the academic journal PLoS ONE, shows how to crowdsource not just gathering, but also verification of information.

Dr Victor Naroditskiy of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity group at the University of Southampton, and lead author of the paper, says: “The success of an information gathering task relies on the ability to identify trustworthy information reports, while false reports are bound to appear either due to honest mistakes or sabotage attempts. This information verification problem is a difficult task, which, just like the information-gathering task, requires the involvement of a large number of people.â€?

Sites like Wikipedia have existing mechanisms for quality assurance and information verification. However, those mechanisms rely partly on reputation, as more experienced editors can check whether an article conforms to the Wikipedia objectivity criteria, has sufficient citations, etc. In addition, Wikipedia has policies for resolving conflicts between editors in cases of disagreement.

However, in time-critical tasks, there is no established hierarchy of participants, and little basis for judging credibility of volunteers who are recruited on the fly. In this kind of scenario, special incentives are needed to carry out verification. The research presented in the PLOS ONE paper provides such incentives.

Professor Iyad Rahwan of Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi and a co-author of the paper, explains: “We showed how to combine incentives to recruit participants to verify information. When a participant submits a report, the participant's recruiter becomes responsible for verifying its correctness. Compensations to the recruiter and to the reporting participant for submitting the correct report, as well as penalties for incorrect reports, ensure that the recruiter will perform verification.â€?

Incentives to recruit participants have previously been proposed by Dr Manuel Cebrian from UCSD, and a co-author of the paper, to win the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge, where teams had to locate 10 weather balloons positioned at random locations throughout the United States. In that scheme, where the person who found the balloons received a pre-determined compensation, for example $1,000, his recruiter received $500 and the recruiter of the recruiter got $250. Dr Manuel Cebrian says: “The results on incentives to encourage verification provide theoretical justification for the incentives used to win the Red Balloon Challenge.â€?

The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory and the National Oceanography Centre Southampton are further developing their links to tackle a number of interdisciplinary issues in the area of subsea power transmission.

For many years, engineers at the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory at Southampton have been involved in research, design and testing work on subsea power cables ranging from small links to GW scale HVDC interconnectors. Southampton is also host to the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, whose scientists possess a huge depth of expertise on the environment beneath our coastal waters. Since the launch of the Southampton Marine & Maritime Institute, the two teams have been further developing their links to tackle a number of interdisciplinary issues in the area of subsea power transmission. This has led to the appointment of three new PhD students, supervised by a cross-disciplinary team.

Tim Hughes gained his first degree in Physics and joined the team in October, where he will be developing numerical models of the thermal environment seen by subsea cable systems. Predicting how this environment will behave and evolve over time is critical to accurately rating power cables, whose current rating is often limited by thermal considerations. Incorrectly rating the cable can either lead to poor asset utilisation, or worse still a premature failure of a multi-million pound asset. Tim’s work is funded through a HubNet studentship. John Emeana spent a number of years working in the offshore industry before deciding to return to university to study for a PhD. John’s work, funded through an iCASE award from National Grid, seeks to gain new knowledge from existing survey techniques to learn more about the evolution of the environment in which the cable operates. A wide variety of data will be used, ranging from core logs through to high resolution seismic data.

Maggie Phuan joined Southampton in 2011 to study for her MSc Energy & Sustainability with Electrical Power Engineering before taking on her PhD studies. Maggie is based at TDHVL and will be developing advanced thermal and statistical models applicable to wind farm cable systems. The inherent variability of wind generation means that conventional design rules using existing thermal models can lead to a very conservative system. New modelling techniques are essential in driving down the cost of connecting offshore renewable energy projects to the grid for the benefit of consumers.

Tim, John and Maggie join a growing cohort of Southampton students working on high voltage cable systems. The group have a long history of working with industry – if you would you like to know more about how you can benefit from our expertise, please contact Prof Paul Lewin.

‘Energy avatars’ in our homes that could advise us on how best to use our energy, and even prompt us on changing appliances to gain better cost savings, are part of the future of energy use described by Professor Nick Jennings in a new video on the BBC website.

Professor Nick Jennings, Head of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and one of the world’s leading experts on agent technology, describes how his research team are devising software which enables people to cut their energy use according to different criteria which can be displayed on devices in the home.

In the video Professor Jennings demonstrates how smart information provided by agents can provide live displays of energy use, which his research team has also characterized according to equivalent use by cars or individual air passengers, for example. ‘This helps us keep track and share information which then encourages people to minimize the amount of energy that they use,’ he says. The key is to enable people to cut their energy use without spending too much time working out how to do it.

Professor Jennings believes that systems like this will be essential as we confront the depletion of non-renewable energy sources and the introduction of greener but more expensive alternatives such as wind and wave power.

The introduction of the ‘Smart Grid’ network will be an essential element in more efficient energy use, enabling utilities and the public to monitor and remotely adjust the millions of devices that use electricity. In-home displays of energy use will be essential to facilitate the efficient working of the Smart Grid, and Professor Jennings and his team are currently working on software that will give consumers more understanding of their energy use – even from individual appliances – and therefore greater control over cost and carbon emissions.

The software also learns the energy profile of the house and will monitor this and suggest ways of optimizing usage to fit pre-set parameters. "Interacting with you, it might say, for example, if your washing machine is very inefficient, if you bought a new one within a certain period of time you would have got that money back," says Professor Jennings.

"People are not interested in spending lots of time investigating their energy usage, even though it is such a big bill, so it makes sense to let machines automate some of the process,� he adds.

For further information on this research contact Professor Nick Jennings.

Silicon Valley comes to Southampton this weekend when budding entrepreneurs are invited to take part in a national competition to learn how to build a successful start-up business.

From Friday 9 to Sunday 11 November, the University of Southampton will be hosting a Silicon Valley comes to UK 2012 StartUp Weekend. It is a 56-hour, non-stop national competition where teams with individuals holding different skill sets compete to build a successful start-up business. Over the course of the weekend, participants of all ages and backgrounds will work together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch start-ups.

The teams will be free to work on any start-up they want but they have to use Open Data and will have access to UK government data sets from data.gov.uk. Participants will use this data to produce high-impact websites and applications, for platforms such as Facebook and Android, to unlock the power of public data.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams design and develop business plans, while constantly refining their start-up ideas. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and win prizes. The judges will also choose a winner to attend an exclusive awards ceremony in London and the chance to compete in the Global Startup Battle.

The winner of last year’s national event was Alejandro Saucedo, an Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) student from the University of Southampton, and he is organising this year’s event with his fellow students Maraim Masoud from ECS and Petar Trifonov from Management. Alejandro says: “It was truly a life-changing experience, that amazing opportunity taught me not to fear failure and to take risks. We want another student to have this amazing experience.â€?

It costs £40 to register (£15 for students) and interested participants can register at www.southampton.startupweekend.org