Southampton RoboGals will be hosting a national event in February, which brings together RoboGals chapters from across the UK.

Robogals is an international organisation run by volunteers, with the core aim of encouraging girls to consider a future in engineering. The Southampton Chapter of RoboGals was established last year and is based in Electronics and Computer Science. Next month, from 8 to 10 February, Southampton RoboGals will host the annual UK SINE (Seminars Inducting New Executive-committees) Conference which trains new committee members of chapters from across the country.

The Conference is set up to allow for training, setting goals for the new year, meeting and socialising with other Robogals members, and sharing knowledge and experience between chapters.

Training sessions will be led by organisations such as National Instruments and Teach First, with talks coming from special guest speakers and University lecturers. Awards such as 'Biggest Impact' and 'Best Teamwork' will be presented to the Chapters that have achieved great success in the last year.

As well as being onsite at the University of Southampton's Highfield Campus, Robogals Southampton sponsor Snowflake Software is kindly allowing the participants to use their facilities in addition to hosting a workshop. Included in the weekend's activities will be a fantastic 'Great Gatsby'-themed formal evening boat party, launching from the seaport.

Robogals Southampton would like to thank Robogals International, our Chapter sponsors, and the department of Electronics and Computer Science for making this event possible, it promises to be a huge success and an enjoyable time for all involved.

Pictured: RoboGals Committeee: (l-r) Shreeprabha Aggarwal, Amy Tong, Emily Barnes, Doga Kuyucu, Bryony Howard, Dan Branch, Yusra Hussain

Some of the UK’s most exciting and cutting-edge aerospace and autonomous technology are being showcased in Southampton next week. The University of Southampton is hosting the Autonomous and Advanced Systems Showcase event on Monday 3 February, where industry, government and academia will explore commercial and research opportunities to deliver the next generation of aerospace, marine, defence and other advanced systems technology to keep the UK at the forefront of these important industries. The Rt Hon David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, will deliver the keynote speech followed by a range of prestigious speakers including Sir Brian Burridge, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Finmeccanica UK, and Michael Pickwoad, Production Designer from Dr Who, who will talk about his creative process and the relationship between science and fiction. Professor Mark Spearing, Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of Southampton, says: “Autonomous and intelligent systems are a key technology for the future of aerospace and a range of industries. As one of the world’s leading Aerospace universities, we have combined our technical excellence with our enterprising nature to form an Aerospace University Industry Sector Team to play our part in global aerospace innovation and reinforce Southampton’s position as a vital aerospace network hub. “The key to making progress in this fast moving area is to have a vibrant interaction between the user community and the researchers and developers of the technologies and ideas. We believe this event, with wide engagement by universities, government and industry, encourages such interactions to occur.â€? The showcase will include both industry and University technology stands and live demonstrations of cutting-edge autonomous and intelligent systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater devices to help in the surveillance, maintenance and management of our society and infrastructure. Ben Jones, Aerospace Collaboration Manager at the University of Southampton, says: “Autonomous and intelligent systems aren’t just new technology; they are the next generation of smarter, safer and more environmentally friendly transportation systems. They are also an important element of other markets, medicine for example, where we are exhibiting research on patient rehabilitation.â€? The event will also include tours of the University’s Zepler Institute, the largest photonics and electronics institute in the UK, and engineering facilities including the RJ Mitchell Wind Tunnel, reverb and anechoic chambers and a live demonstration of active noise control of a Q400M aircraft. The showcase is sponsored by the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium (FAC) and the Aerospace, Aviation and Defence Knowledge Transfer Network (AAD KTN).

Two professors from the University of Southampton have been awarded highly prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi and Professor Damon Teagle have received their awards in recognition of outstanding contribution to their respective fields. Jointly funded by the Wolfson Foundation and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Wolfson Research Merit Award recognises talented scientists of outstanding achievement and potential. Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi:

Professor Al-Hashimi, the founder and director of the University’s Pervasive Systems Research Centre as well as Associate Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, is leading the £5.6 million EPSRC programme called PRiME – Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems. The project brings together four world-leading universities and five industrial partners, to address major research challenges in future high performance and low-energy embedded computing systems.

He says: “I am honoured and delighted to receive this Award. I am also proud that this Award comes in recognition of my research in electronics and software which has a tremendous impact on life - from the internet and consumer electronics to healthcare and transportation.â€?

Professor Al-Hashimi has a worldwide reputation for research into energy-efficient, reliable and testable digital hardware and has a strong track record of innovation in system-level power management and power-constrained testing of systems-on-chip used in handheld devices. Last year, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He also has a long association with the innovative microelectronics group ARM, which sponsors his professorial chair and for whom he is the co-director of the ARM-ECS research centre.

In an industrial and academic career spanning 25 years, Professor Al-Hashimi has authored 300 publications, authored, co-authored and edited five research books in topics ranging from electronic circuits simulation to low-power test of integrated circuits, system-on-chip to energy-efficient embedded systems. He is very proud of the career development of his students (successfully supervising 30 PhD theses), many of whom now hold senior positions in industry and academia worldwide.

Professor Damon Teagle:

Damon Teagle is a Professor of Geochemistry and Director of Research for Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton. He is also the Deputy Director (Research) of the newly-launched Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute. Professor Teagle has wide ranging scientific interests spanning economic ore mineralisation, atmospheric particles, to public understanding of environmental policy. He is expert in the formation and evolution of the ocean crust, which covers more than 60 per cent or our planet, and the influence of hydrothermal seawater-basalt exchange on global chemical budgets, such as the carbon cycle and the chemistry of the oceans.

His Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award is to further understanding of the timing, duration and extent of exchange on the vast ocean ridge flanks through radiometric dating of hydrothermal minerals recovered from the ocean floor by scientific ocean drilling.

The University of Southampton was one of six universities around the world which took part in EMECS-thon 2014 last weekend.

EMECS-thon is an international technical event where students use their engineering skills to design, build and implement projects based on their own ideas over a 48-hour period.

This year's event took place between 31 January and 2 February in six technical universities worldwide: Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway, University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia, Al Quds University in Palestine, and "Politehnica� University of Timisoara in Romania.

Around 150 students organized in more than 50 teams took part in EMECS-thon 2014. After a weekend of activity the global EMECS-thon guru prize was won by Snow Crash from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, with a project consisting of an automatic chess machine.

The local winners in Southampton were:

• “Best Internet of Things implementationâ€? award - won by team 'Dynamic Integrated Synergy Solutions (DISS)' who built a Home Camera Monitor System; • “Best Technical implementationâ€? award - won by team 'Needs more lasers' with a project Laser Harp; • “Best commercial ideaâ€? award - won by team 'Clinomaniacs' who built Human Follower Robot; • “People’s choiceâ€? award - won by team 'Four Engineers' who built a Physical version of Pong Game.

The event was organized by EMECS students and alumni with the support of academia in EMECS, all the participating universities, Erasmus Mundus Association, Edelvais, IEEE Southampton student branch and companies such as Atmel, ARM, Xilinx, Microchip, Nordic Semiconductor, Digi-Key and Sparkfun. Crispin Semmens of ARM attended the event in ECS and took part in the prizegiving, and Dr Basel Halek of ECS was a member of the judging team.

“We are happy to congratulate all participants for attending and surviving a 48-hours embedded systems marathon. "We admire the great ideas that ended up implemented during EMECS-thon 2014 and we thank our partners and supporters for making this event a triumph. We are looking forward to an even more successful EMECS-thon 2015,â€? said Angel Codrean, EMECS-thon Global Coordinator).

EMECS is the The European Masters in Embedded Computing Systems (EMECS), a two-year programme run in conjunction with Kaiserslautern University and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology at Trondheim. For further information, see http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/programmes/european-masters-embedded-computing-systems-emecs

Access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects could be opened up for students with learning disabilities or print disabilities such as visual impairments and dyslexia, thanks to new government funding for a team of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) researchers at the University of Southampton.

ECS Partners’ STEMReader project is one of eight innovative schemes to share in £500,000 funding from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the UK’s innovation agency – The Technology Strategy Board. The project is part of the ‘Ready steady STEM’ competition managed by Jisc TechDis, a leading UK advisory service on technologies for inclusion.

The funding will be used to help develop a tool to assist with reading aloud and comprehending mathematical symbols and notations.

Project leader Dr Mike Wald said: “Currently it is extremely difficult for a student with a print impairment, such as a visual impairment, dyslexia or dyscalculia, to read aloud a maths notation using a computer or mobile device.

“STEMReader will enable students to open, reformat into large fonts, and hear aloud documents and materials containing maths content. It will make a significant step forward in reading aloud maths for learners at all levels from basics, to people in the workplace, to students at university.â€?

Up to ten million individuals in the UK are estimated to be affected by print disabilities or dyscalculia, and people that face these barriers to reading and comprehending maths can struggle with STEM subjects. Having a tool to read aloud mathematical language and symbols become one of the most helpful coping strategies when manipulating mathematical concepts.

“By developing the STEMReader tool we will enable for the first time a broader range of publishers and educators to easily share accessible STEM materials that can be read and understood by all types of users,â€? added Dr Wald.

ECS Partners will be working with colleagues in other colleges and workplace learning providers to investigate how STEMReader can be used to help learners struggling to understand maths and help them to develop their functional numeracy skills.

The funding is part of the Small Business Research Initiative programme that encourages technology solutions to specific public sector needs. The £500,000 will support eight projects for six months that will open up access to STEM subjects for disabled learners. The projects may bid for further funding to develop their research.

For more information about the competition and the other successful companies, visit www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/sbri.

A ground-breaking transmedia alternate-reality game (ARG), which is the first large-scale project to explore ‘digital provenance’, has been launched. In the art world, provenance documents the chain of ownership of an artefact: In the digital world, provenance is a description of what influenced an artefact, a data set, a document, a blog or any resource on the Web and beyond. Researchers from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham are examining how people can relate to the concept of digital provenance of objects through the free ‘The Apocalypse of MoP’ ARG. Working with the Nottingham-based artists group Urban Angel, the game mixes theatre, art, gaming and research for players to untangle events in a complex mystery thriller, based on the activities of a sinister government organisation, by understanding the history of ownership and modifications of objects. Professor Luc Moreau, from the Web and Internet Science group (WAIS) in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton says: “The World Wide Web is now deeply intertwined with our lives, and has become a catalyst for a data deluge, making vast amounts of data available online, at a click of a button. With Web 2.0, users are no longer passive consumers, but active publishers and curators of data. Hence, from science to food manufacturing, from data journalism to personal well-being, from social media to art, there is a strong interest in provenance. “Provenance is a crucial piece of information that can help a consumer make a judgment as to whether something can be trusted. Provenance is no longer seen as a curiosity in art circles, but it is regarded as pragmatically, ethically, and methodologically crucial for our day-to-day data manipulation and curation activities on the Web.â€? As well as providing an exciting experience for players over the next six months, the team hope that the game will lead to new insights into how storing and showing the history of a piece of art, or the ingredients of food should be provided to people in an intuitive manner. The game is partially supported by the EPSRC funded ORCHID project. The researchers held a live launch event for the project entitled Genesis of Cr0n at last year’s GameCity8 festival and it has been carried over to the online environment at www.cr0n.org - everything that happened during the live events has been posted to the Cr0n website so you can get up to date.

ECS alumnus Andrei Petre has launched the first version of his new app, SafeMaps – “the only travelling companion you will ever needâ€?.

Andrei comments: “To sum it up, SafeMaps keeps you safe while travelling by showing you incidents around your location and automatically keeping your friends up-to-date with your journey. It does this with minimal effort from the user - just tell it where you're going.â€?

Andrei is hoping for feedback from early users. SafeMaps is available on the AppStore: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/safemaps/id815331595?mt=8, with an Android version coming soon, depending on user requests.

Portsmouth-based PCB assembly, test and repair company, Soumac, have teamed up with the world-renowned Electronics and Computer Science department at the University of Southampton to launch the Soumac Award.

Open to all students, this annual prize is awarded for an outstanding student project that displays a passion and enthusiasm for the industry, an innovative use of technology to solve a problem and is commercially viable. This year’s inaugural winner is a low-cost atmospheric imaging and data collection device, designed and built by final-year student Jonathan Griffiths.

The quality of entrants to the first year of this competition was particulary high and Jonathan’s project was joined in a final shortlist of three, alongside a smart phone-operated electronic lock and small scale quadcopter platform for robotic swarm development.

Despite tough competition, Jonathan’s project, the development and build of a device to take temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and GPS readings, alongside images, all in the confines of a ping pong ball, stood out. The device had even been tested, going up into the earth’s atmosphere attached to a weather balloon, which ended up in the Nevada desert, USA.

Alongside a cash prize and trophy, Jonathan got to showcase his project on the Soumac stand at the recent Southern Manufacturing Show in Farnborough.

Jonathan said of winning the award: "I feel privileged to have been awarded the 2014 Soumac Award. It was an honour to be given the opportunity to present my project at the 2014 Southern Manufacturing Show. It has given me an insight into the inner workings of the industry."

Soumac Managing Director, Mike Souter, said: “After interviewing the candidates and getting them to demonstrate their projects it was quite a difficult decision to decide on the winner. However, Jonathan’s project won our award by showing great innovation, overcoming a lot of technical problems and demonstrating his project worked.â€?

Of Soumac’s decision to launch the competition, Professor Neil White, Head of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton commented: "We are delighted that Soumac has awarded this new prize, which recognizes the quality and diversity of our students’ project work. Projects are a major part of our curriculum, giving the students a chance to use their skills and imagination in tackling real problems of the kind they will confront in industry."

Jonathan received his prize at the Southern Manufacturing Show at Farnborough and is photographed here with Soumac Director Steve Woods.

Three ECS students have launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to mass produce their super-high resolution open source screen adapter - OSCAR.

Freddie Temperton, Adam Gryko and Will Bright, who are all in the second year of their MEng programme in Electronic Engineering at ECS, have devised and prototyped the product; their team is completed by Ali Lown, Lead Software Developer, who is studying at Imperial College London. They are hoping that the value of the new product, described in their slick video, will help them move towards their funding goal of at least £15,000.

OSCAR is an adapter that allows you to connect a super high resolution 9.7� screen, often found in tablets, to your computer. It comes pre-connected to the LCD panel ready to be attached and is compatible with all operating systems using a Thunderbolt or DisplayPort connection.

The board is Arduino compatible which makes modifying the behaviour easy and all the software and hardware is open source. The particular display used with OSCAR is the one most commonly found in the iPad 3 and 4, marketed as the 'Retina Display' and, according to the team’s website, has a whopping 2048x1536 pixels. This gives it an amazing pixel density of 264ppi (pixels per inch) and glorious colours. The team have designed a case in laser-cut clear acrylic which also enhances the display by putting it in an equally clean-looking surround.

The team suggest possible uses of OSCAR, including high resolution photo and video editing; watching high definition video; a portable second monitor for your laptop; gaming; colour sensitive work; PDF reading; and any Arduino project imaginable!

According to the team OSCAR takes care of driving the LED backlight and regulating the panel power supply. With the onboard ATmega32U4, the device is Arduino compatible and acts like an Arduino Leonardo. This enables USB communications so that you can use OSCAR to control elements such as backlight brightness and enables you to expand the functionality of OSCAR. Adding an IR receiver for control or adding an IMU board to automatically rotate the screen are all possible.

The team add: ‘We are sparing no expense when it comes to manufacturing. OSCAR will be produced in the UK with the PCBs being made and assembled nearby, and a London-based laser cutting company will produce the cases. The kits will be assembled, personally tested and shipped from Southampton, making sure we uphold quality throughout the product.’

In addition to the video the team’s website also provides a full description of the product. The students are already over 40 per cent of the way towards their goal with 20 days remaining ... watch this space!!!

Robogals Southampton has hosted the annual Seminar Inducting New Executives (SINE) conference in only its first year in operation.

The conference provides an opportunity for the new (and outgoing) executive committees of each Robogals chapter in the UK to learn more about the organisation and to share ideas. This year's SINE conference was larger than ever, with 50 attendees from across eight universities: Bristol, Manchester, Imperial College London, Exeter, Liverpool, Loughborough, Cambridge and Southampton. Also in attendance was the Regional Executive Officer (REO) for Robogals UK, Lauren Hassall; the CEO of Robogals, Nicole Brown, and the COO of Robogals, Samantha Cheah.

The conference consisted of three activity-filled days. The first day was hosted by Robogals Southampton's Silver Sponsor, Snowflake Software, at their Southampton office. This included workshops introducing the attendees to Robogals as well as a Robotics workshop by National Instruments (Robogals Southampton's Partner) and a workshop on elevator pitches by Snowflake Software.

The second day was hosted at the University, and consisted of Role-Specific training for the new executives as well as a workshop by Teach First. The day culminated in a Great Gatsby-themed boat party hosted by Robogals Southampton. The boat trip was sponsored by ECS and ARM (Robogals Southampton's Bronze sponsor). Chapter awards were presented during the sail to the Southampton Container Terminal, with Robogals Southampton winning Best Publicity and Best Impact (despite having been in operation for only a year!)

The final day consisted of a trip to SeaCity Museum, a tour of the Zepler Institute cleanrooms, and a talk by ECS Professor Steve Gunn. All attendees had nothing but praise for the conference, with the CEO and COO declaring it the best UK SINE to date!

Photo: SINE conference participants at the workshops event, hosted by Snowflake Software