The University of Southampton IEEE Branch had a very successful visit to the IEEE UK&RI Student Branch Congress 2013, held earlier this month at the University of Bath.
The Student Congress is held every two years, aimed at bringing together student branches from across the UK and the Republic of Ireland to learn about technology, promoting the IEEE ideals, networking and promoting the sharing of best practice among student branches through learning from each other.
A pioneering project by the University of Southampton, which aims to improve energy efficiency in the home, has won the British Gas Connecting Homes Startup Competition.
Dr Reuben Wilcock and Professor Alex Rogers, from Electronics and Computer Science, won first prize for MyJoulo at an event which saw 25 companies from around the world pitching innovative products and services in the home energy sector.
As well as the award, which was presented by Baroness Martha Lane Fox of lastminute.com, the researchers received a cash prize of £30,000 and the chance to run a trial with selected British Gas customers.
Dr Wilcock says: âWhat was clear about MyJoulo was the elegant and simple concept and the careful attention to satisfy every stakeholder, from the supplier to the customer. MyJoulo is given to households free of charge by their energy supplier and in three easy steps gives them personalised advice about what new energy technologies they could benefit from in their home.â?
MyJoulo is a simple process, which provides personalised energy-saving advice with the minimum of time and effort â and at no cost. Only three steps are involved in the process: first you register with the project online and you receive your free Joulo data logger (which looks and works just like a conventional memory stick). You place this on top of your central-heating thermostat and leave it for a week to collect data as you continue to use your heating as normal. You then upload the data from the logger to a website to receive instant personalised advice on how to reduce your heating bill.
Professor Alex Rogers adds: âMyJoulo aims to give people understandable energy advice and weâre looking forward to bringing this to millions of customers in the UK.â?
The Open Data Institute (ODI) has awarded Honorary Founding Partner status to the University of Southampton in recognition of its exceptional contribution to the setup and development of the organisation. It comes exactly 12 months after its unofficial opening and move to its London HQ.
Since the ODIâs inception, the University has provided expertise, practical advice and in the very early stages, seed funding. On an ongoing basis, Southampton remains a key partner: the ODIâs Chairman and co-founder, Sir Nigel Shadbolt is also Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University; and it provides academic guidance and hands-on support in the delivery of the ODIâs training programme.
The ODIâs Commercial Director, Stuart Coleman said: âThe University of Southampton has played a seminal role in the design, conception and implementation of the ODI. In fact, the ODI could not have been conceived, launched and sustained without the bedrock of support the University provided. In recognition of this commitment the ODI is delighted to afford the University Honorary Founding Partner status. Moving ahead, our teams will continue to collaborate as our partnership expands to focus on the provision of core training, education and research related services in the field of open data.â?
The confirmation of Founding Partner status will cement the relationship between the ODI and the University bringing benefits to both partners:
â? It lends additional professional credibility to the ODI as a training organisation, enabling it to confidently develop an educational offering at the cutting edge of open data science.
â? It adds value to other ODI partnership programmes, including one recently announced with the OKF and The World Bank.
â? It places the University and the ODI together, as worldwide leaders in university- accredited open data education.
â? It opens up opportunities to develop new courses and research projects and to bring them to a worldwide audience.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, Professor Don Nutbeam, said: âAs a recognised pioneer of open data, the University of Southampton is delighted to join the ODI as a foundation partner. We are a university that has a world-class reputation for computer and data science and we look forward to working with the ODI to make data more readily available and accessible, and to further cement the UK's position as an international leader in open data.â?
The Honorary Founding Partnership comes exactly a year after the appointment of the ODIâs leadership team and the move into their HQ at 65 Clifton Street, Shoreditch. The 12 month anniversary will be celebrated officially with the first annual ODI Summit on 29 October.
A pair of ECS students have won an international award for their research developing a smartphone app to search for a rare insect in the New Forest, UK.
Davide Zilli and Oliver Parson received the award for Outstanding Student Paper in the Artificial Intelligence and Computational Sustainability special track at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
The award was in recognition of their work developing the app that is helping to rediscover the rare New Forest cicada (Cicadetta montana) â the only cicada native to the UK.
The app turns mobile phones into portable cicada detectors that scour the area in search of the elusive creature. If a potential cicada song is detected the app prompts the user to upload the recording so that it can be analysed in more detail.
Davide, a PhD student in the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation who is about to start an internship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: âWe are honoured to have received this award. It highlights our potential to develop principled artificial intelligence technology and apply it to real-world problems.
âComing from the worldâs top artificial intelligence conference, it is great recognition for the research we have put into this project. Working in computation sustainability is great because it allows us to apply our work to the natural environment around us.â?
As well as the award the pair have also been invited to publish their paper in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.
Oliver, a PhD student in the Agents, Interaction and Complexity Group who is about to start an EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, added: âWe launched the app earlier this year and have had about 1,500 downloads and more than 5,000 reports. Unfortunately no cicadas were detected in the New Forest but we hope next year will provide an even better opportunity to search.â?
Sightings of the endangered cicada in the New Forest date back to 1812 but it hasnât been spotted or heard from for more than two decades. Each year from May to July it sings with a very characteristic high-pitch song that is at the limit of human hearing and is particularly difficult for most adults to hear.
The team has recently demonstrated the app at the British Science Festival, in Newcastle, and the BBC Summer of Wildlife event, at Sutton Park, Birmingham.
Summer 2013, seven students from Southampton and Oxford Universities participated in the 10-week Micro Focus Development Internship scheme at their headquarters in Newbury, Berkshire.
The team consisted of new and returning interns under the supervision of two Micro Focus developers, Gary Stoneman and Warren Prescott, who had completed the graduate scheme themselves.
This yearâs internship project involved designing and implementing a brand new Data File Editor. The requirement for this project has been driven by a demand from the customers of Micro Focus who required a tool that could open extremely large data files, sometimes upwards of 80GB, and be able to quickly locate a specific record to be changed. Intern Gen-Nam Lam details: âThe data editor project comprised of many different components involving processing data from IO to displaying the data via a number of different interfaces (GUI, web, command-line). Being able to work on a range of areas rather than a single component keeps the job interesting and seeing how other people code was a good insight on how to adjust my own coding style.â?
Through participation as Interns the team gained experience of how software development methodologies are applied to real-life projects. Jimi from Oxford commented: âMicro Focus has introduced me to Agile development paradigms, which have helped with the organisation of work and enabled us to get up and running doing useful work almost straightaway.â? Like every development team at Micro Focus, the team used these techniques to plan their work and track progress. Southampton undergraduate Tung explains: âEach week, a planning session is carried out with the required tasks taken from the backlog, and points are estimated for each item. Each item is then broken down into smaller tasks by their ownerâ?. A common aspect of agile development is the daily scrum or âstand-upâ?. âAt the start of each day, a 10-minute scrum covered what had been logged for the last 24 hours and what was planned for the next 24 hours," says Alex (Southampton).
Aside from work, Micro Focus believes the social side is important for the students, giving them an opportunity to create a good team atmosphere and meet some of the staff. Returning intern Patrick says: âItâs always impressive how friendly other people in the company are, and how much theyâre willing to help with issues you might be having. Itâs often surprising just how much some people know about a given topic or field."
One of the employee benefits is a discount to the local leisure centre that allows participation in inter-company sports and games. Intern Sam adds: âMicro Focusâ company lifestyle has also helped make working here an enjoyable experience. The people have been friendly and welcoming and the atmosphere relaxed yet professional, and the treatment we have received even as interns has been great.â?
Hopefully intern Ali speaks for them all when he says âOverall, working as part of a team here has been a great experience and I have very much enjoyed working at Micro Focus.â?
Micro Focus offers paid summer internships every year and also has graduate software developer roles open. To apply or to find out more, see the Micro Focus careers website.
Micro Focus will be giving a company presentation in ECS on Wednesday 20 November at 2pm. All welcome.
Academic and research staff in Physical Sciences and Engineering (FPSE) have shown they are at the forefront of their research fields by securing nearly £10m of funding for fellowships in just one year.
The fellowships have been spread across the three academic units in FPSE â Electronics and Computer Science; Optoelectronics; and Physics and Astronomy â with the aim to create future research leaders as well as support established research leaders.
FPSE Associate Dean Research, Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, said: âA key component of the faculty research strategy is to diversify research income and to build new and increased research capabilities across the faculty and in relevant areas with significant impact on scientific advances, economy and society. Increasing the number of academics and early career researchers with prestigious fellowships clearly helps to realise this strategy.
âSecuring so many fellowships is a reflection of the outstanding quality of our academics and researchers and the relevance of the problems their research is addressing,â? he added.
In early 2011, FPSE set up a Future Academic and Research Leaders Mentoring Network chaired by Bashir that identifies academic and research staff who have the greatest potential to secure fellowships.
The network works closely with candidates across the whole cycle from proposal preparation, faculty financial support, to submission and preparing them for interview.
The winners of the fellowships are:
Electronics and Computer Science
Lajos Hanzo who gained a European Research Councilsâ Advanced Investigator Grant of â¬2,012,003 to investigate Radio-Frequency to Giga-Bit Optical and Quantum Wireless.
Hywel Morgan who gained a Royal Society Industry Fellowship of £187,580 to research Low cost consumer electronics for 21st Century healthcare.
Optoelectronics
James Wilkinson who gained a European Research Councilsâ Advanced Investigator Grant of â¬3,062,006 to explore Wideband Integrated Photonics for Accessible Biomedical Diagnostics.
Radan Slavik who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £948,809 to explore Overcoming Capacity and Energy Limits in Optimal Communications.
Physics and Astronomy
Anna Scaife who gained a LODESTONE fellowship of â¬1,928,369 for Unifying the radio spectrum to map the magnetic universe.
Otto Muskens who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £1,071,379 to develop Complex nanophotonic and plasmonic networks for ultrafast optical devices.
Keith Wilcox who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Early Career Researcher grant of £597,061 to develop a novel tuneable space frequency comb.
Alexey Kavokin who gained an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Established Career grant of £1,218,053 for research into Plaritonics for quantum technology applications.
If you missed Professor Dame Wendy Hall staring in an episode of âLife Scientificâ on BBC Radio 4 at 9.00am, not to worry because you can catch it again tonight at 9.30pm.
In the programme Wendy talks to professor and presenter, Jim Al Khalili, about how the web is still not quite what it should be and and about the new discipline she has helped to found, Web Science.
New students to the University of Southampton will be able to easily find their way around their new city thanks to a new system based on technology pioneered by Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).
The Live Bus Timetable system shows users the location of any landmark, food outlet, pub or bus stop across the city and tells them the buses to use.
All they need to do is type in the name of their required destination and, if they are using a computer the campus they are on (mobile phones use GPS to establish current location) and the service will show them the best way to get there.
The system has been developed by the Universityâs Open Data Service and the work has been spearheaded by Dr Ash Smith, a former ECS Research Fellow who now works for the Universityâs central IT service.
âThe new system has been created using the novel feature of combining information from two different open council datasets â the food hygiene ratings and bus timetable data â together with dbpedia.org, the open data equivalent of Wikipedia. This Live Bus Timetable system is a handy service, especially for freshers, to find the buses they need to catch to where they want to go. It is very simple to use and draws a map of their nearest stop in relation to their current position, as well as giving them a list of all the stops on their route,â? said Ash.
âBy combining these sources of open data we have used it in ways it wasnât initially intended, and have opened up the doors to using open data for a whole range of new applications,â? he added.
Ash completed his PhD at Southampton and is an honorary member of the Web and Internet Science Research Group, based in ECS.
Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has welcomed the first students onto its new Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) degree at the University of Southamptonâs Malaysia campus (USMC)
The new degree programme started this autumn at USMC, at EduCity@Iskandar Nusjaya, with an initial intake of 10 students.
The four year 2+2 MEng degree will see the students spend the first two years studying in Malaysia before transferring to Southampton, UK, for the final two years.
The programme, which has been approved by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency and accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, combines ECS academicsâ long experience in teaching excellent electrical engineering and electronic engineering programmes.
The EEE programme at USMC is identical to that offered at the Southampton campus, including the duplication of the outstanding ECS undergraduate laboratory facilities in Malaysia. As well as core EEE staff based at USMC, many academic staff from Southampton will be visiting USMC over the coming year to teach on the course.
The University of Southampton has pioneered many of the most important advances in electronics and microelectronics over the past 30 years and is ranked first in the UK for Electrical and Electronic Engineering by The Guardian University Guide 2014.
Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, said: âWe are delighted to welcome our first students onto this pioneering course. The new programme gives them the unique opportunity to study both electronics and electrical engineering in Malaysia and Southampton, where they will be able to investigate the whole range of EEE from nano-scale devices up to grid level high voltage engineering.â?â
The EEE degree joins Southamptonâs undergraduate MEng in Mechanical Engineering that enrolled its first students at USMC in 2012. The University is proud to offer these two flagship programmes through its Malaysia Campus.
She was one of just 10 UK students who were recently announced as winners of the BAFTA Scholarship Programme.
The Programme is part of BAFTAâs charitable activity to support talented people at all stages of their career in film, television and games. The scholarship winners were selected by a panel of industry professionals.
Mawusime will receive £7,500 towards further course fees, mentoring support from BAFTA members, and free access to BAFTA events around the UK. She will share her learning experiences on BAFTAâs online learning channel and take part in future BAFTA outreach to young people.
Mawusime said: âIt is a great honour to receive this scholarship and will allow me to complete my Masters degree in computer animation."
âMy course at Southampton was a great mix of computer theory and practice that gave me a good foundation in computer imagery and helped me begin my career working with computer graphics.
âThe University has an excellent reputation for computer science courses and provides its students with great support from the academic staff. The facilities are fantastic. We had 24-hour access to the computer labs and student versions of software to use at home. I would definitely encourage other students to study at Southampton.â?
Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, said: âWe are very proud of what Mawusime has achieved. She joins many of our other ECS alumni who have gone on to gain prestigious positions and accolades not just in the UK but around the world.â?
