Professor Dame Wendy Hall from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton has been named among the top 50 most inspirational women in European technology for 2016 as revealed by Inspiring Fifty.

Dame Wendy was recognised for her incredible career achievements in Computer Science, which judges said make her ‘a fantastic role model’. The Web Science pioneer joins leading influencers, entrepreneurs, business leaders, academics and policy makers throughout Europe who were nominated by the public and selected by a panel of judges from Europe and the US.

“Our aim at Inspiring Fifty is to showcase and celebrate amazing women, to provide girls and young women role models who can show them that a career path in technology can be an exciting and rewarding one,â€? say Insipring Fifty. “The ultimate aim of our work is to help address the gender imbalance in the technology sector and build a more positive future for the next generation.â€? Dame Wendy is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, Director of the Southampton-based Web Science Institute and Managing Director of the Web Science Trust. As one of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, the influence of Dame Wendy’s work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Semantic Web and the emerging discipline of Web Science, which celebrates its 10th anniversary later this year. Dame Wendy’s current research includes applications of the Semantic Web and exploring the interface between the life sciences and physical sciences. In addition to playing a prominent role in the development of Computer Science, Dame Wendy is also helping to shape science engineering policy and education through her leadership on national and international bodies. Throughout her career, Dame Wendy has been a leading advocate in promoting the role of women in science, engineering and technology.

Evolution may be more intelligent than we thought, according to a professor in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Professor Richard Watson of the Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group says new research shows that evolution is able to learn from previous experience, which could provide a better explanation of how evolution by natural selection produces such apparently intelligent designs.

By unifying the theory of evolution (which shows how random variation and selection is sufficient to provide incremental adaptation) with learning theories (which show how incremental adaptation is sufficient for a system to exhibit intelligent behaviour), this research shows that it is possible for evolution to exhibit some of the same intelligent behaviours as learning systems (including neural networks).

A cover story article in New Scientist, looks at research from Professors Watson and Eörs Szathmáry, from the Parmenides Foundation in Munich, explaining how formal analogies can be used to transfer specific models and results between the two theories to solve several important evolutionary puzzles.

Professor Watson says: “Darwin’s theory of evolution describes the driving process, but learning theory is not just a different way of describing what Darwin already told us. It expands what we think evolution is capable of. It shows that natural selection is sufficient to produce significant features of intelligent problem-solving.â€?

For example, a key feature of intelligence is an ability to anticipate behaviours that that will lead to future benefits. Conventionally, evolution, being dependent on random variation, has been considered ‘blind’ or at least ‘myopic’ – unable to exhibit such anticipation. But showing that evolving systems can learn from past experience means that evolution has the potential to anticipate what is needed to adapt to future environments in the same way that learning systems do.

“When we look at the amazing, apparently intelligent designs that evolution produces, it takes some imagination to understand how random variation and selection produced them. Sure, given suitable variation and suitable selection (and we also need suitable inheritance) then we’re fine. But can natural selection explain the suitability of its own processes? That self-referential notion is troubling to conventional evolutionary theory – but easy in learning theory.

“Learning theory enables us to formalise how evolution changes its own processes over evolutionary time. For example, by evolving the organisation of development that controls variation, the organisation of ecological interactions that control selection or the structure of reproductive relationships that control inheritance – natural selection can change its own ability to evolve.

“If evolution can learn from experience, and thus improve its own ability to evolve over time, this can demystify the awesomeness of the designs that evolution produces. Natural selection can accumulate knowledge that enables it to evolve smarter. That’s exciting because it explains why biological design appears to be so intelligent.â€?

Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science within Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, has arrived at The John W. Kluge Center at the US Library of Congress as the Kluge Chair in Technology and Society. Her tenure began on 24th March and she will be in residence there for three months.

At the Kluge Center, Dame Wendy will research a project titled, “Internet Histories and Futures.â€? She states that she will use the Library’s collections to explore the economic, social, and technical dimensions that have contributed to the development of the Web as a “socio-technical system".

Before her return to Southampton this summer, Dame Wendy will lead a public symposium on 16th looking at how libraries, governments and institutions could preserve and archive the contents of the World Wide Web. She will also co-host a two-day “Hackathonâ€? featuring 20-30 invited participants who will look to develop new open-source tools and approaches for working with large data sets.

The Kluge Chair in Technology and Society is a distinguished senior research position in residence at the Library. Its holder, appointed by the Librarian of Congress, conducts research focusing on the impact of fast-changing technology on human societies, using the rapidly growing digital online resources of the Library, in addition to science and technology reports and documentation worldwide.

A Dame Commander of the British Empire and elected Fellow of the Royal Society, Dame Wendy’s work has been at the forefront of computer science, multimedia and hypermedia, the Semantic Web and digital libraries for more than 30 years. She is a member of the Web and Internet Science research group in ECS and is Director of the University’s Web Science Institute.

A University of Southampton academic will participate in the world’s largest project to expand and update our understanding of evolutionary biology.

Dr Richard Watson, associate professor of Electronics and Computer Science and the Institute for Life Sciences at Southampton, is part of an international multi-disciplinary team of 50 world-renowned experts, from eight institutions in the United States, Great Britain and Sweden. The £7.7m project is supported by a £5.7m grant from the John Templeton Foundation, an organisation promoting the advancement of science and philosophy, with a further £2m contributed by the participating institutions.

The collaboration seeks to expand the theory of evolution with new perspectives on the relationships between genes, organism, and environment. It centres on the ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ (EES) – a new way to think about evolutionary biology aimed at tackling some of its toughest problems. The EES does not replace traditional thinking, but deployed alongside it, aims to stimulate new research within evolutionary biology.

Project leader Professor Kevin Laland at the University of St Andrews said: “The main difference from traditional perspectives is that the extended evolutionary synthesis includes a greater set of causes of evolution. This shifts the burden of explanation for adaptation and diversification; away from a one-sided focus on natural selection and towards the constructive processes of development.â€?

For example, in the EES, a number of complex biological phenomena are recognised not merely as products of evolution, but as playing a key role in shaping the direction and rate of evolution. For example, in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), the evolution of developmental organisation changes the variation that selection can act on; and in evolutionary ecology (evo-eco), the evolution of ecological organisation changes the selective pressures that act on that variation.

Dr Watson will lead two sub-projects that aim to expand our understanding of both these evolutionary feedbacks using theoretical tools from computer science. “When the products of evolution modify the processes of evolution in this way, this causes problems for current evolutionary theory,â€? he explains. “But in computer science, these feedbacks are well-understood in the framework of learning systems.â€?

Dr Watson’s recent work, which was featured as the front cover story in New Scientist last week, defines the formal links between evolution and learning that enable results to be transferred from computer science to update our understanding of biological evolution. He said: “This work suggests that these feedbacks are not just ‘a complication’ but change the capabilities of Darwinian evolution; specifically, evolution is smarter than we realised.â€?

The grant, entitled “Putting the extended evolutionary synthesis to the testâ€?, is one of the largest to ever be awarded to evolutionary research. It funds 22 inter-linked projects in total – including theoretical development and empirical experiments – and supports a wide range of additional activities that will promote interaction and collaboration between institutions. The other institutions supported by the Templeton grant are Clark, Indiana and Stanford universities, and the Sante Fe Institute, in the U.S.; Cambridge and St. Andrews universities in Great Britain; and the University of Lund in Sweden. Research on the project will start in September 2016.

Scientists from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, in partnership with the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), have developed a graphene-based sensor and switch that can detect harmful air pollution in the home with very low power consumption.

The sensor detects individual CO2 molecules and volatile organic compound (VOC) gas molecules found in building and interior materials, furniture and even household goods, which adversely affect our living in modern houses with good insulation.

These harmful chemical gases have low concentrations of ppb (parts per billion) levels and are extremely difficult to detect with current environmental sensor technology, which can only detect concentrations of parts per million (ppm).

In recent years, there has been an increase in health problems due to air pollution in personal living spaces, known as sick building syndrome (SBS), along with other conditions such as sick car and sick school syndromes.

The research group, led by Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, who holds a joint appointment at the University of Southampton and JAIST, and Dr Jian Sun and Assistant Professor Manoharan Muruganathan of JAIST, developed the sensor to detect individual CO2 molecules adsorbed (the bond of molecules from a gas to a surface) onto the suspended graphene (single atomic sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like hexagonal crystal lattice structure) one by one by applying an electric field across the structure.

By monitoring the electrical resistance of the graphene beam, the adsorption and desorption (whereby a substance is released from or through a surface) processes of individual CO2 molecules onto the graphene were detected as ‘quantised’ changes in resistance (step-wise increase or decrease in resistance). In the study, published today in Science Advances, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a small volume of CO2 gas (equivalent to a concentration of approximately 30 ppb) was released and the detection time was only a few minutes.

Professor Mizuta said: “In contrast to the commercially available environmental monitoring tools, this extreme sensing technology enables us to realise significant miniaturisation, resulting in weight and cost reduction in addition to the remarkable improvement in the detection limit from the ppm levels to the ppb levels.â€?

Research group members, Dr Harold Chong of Southampton and Dr Marek Schmidt and Dr Jian Sun of JAIST, have also recently developed graphene-based switches (published in the March issue of Nanoscale, the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry) using a uniquely thin film developed at the University of Southampton.

The switches, which require remarkably low voltages (below three volts), can be used to power electronic components on demand, greatly improving the battery lifetime of personal electronic devices.

Professor Mizuta and the research group are now aiming to bring the two technologies together to create ultra-low-power environmental sensor systems that can detect single molecules.

The department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton has achieved excellent results in the Complete University Guide institutional rankings for 2017, topping the UK tables for graduate prospects in both Electrical & Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.

Electronics & Electrical Engineering retained a top three position – for the eight year running – on a range of criteria that included student satisfaction, graduate job prospects, research, and entry standards. In this table, Southampton shares the top three places with Cambridge and Imperial College London and jointly leads the table for graduate prospects.

In the Computer Science category, ECS again takes the lead for graduate prospects and achieved an increase of two places bringing it to sixth in the table.

Alongside ECS within the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Physics and Astronomy moved ahead five places to 14th place.

Professor Bashir M Al-Hashimi, Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering commented: “Continued success in these tables is an excellent achievement. I thank staff across the faculty for their hard work and commitment in delivering such high quality education for our students within the context of world-class research activity. I am particularly proud of our success in the area of graduate prospects. Our students can have confidence that they will benefit from our strong industry connections and continued investment in state of the art facilities to remain in demand by leading high-tech companies for the breadth of their technical understanding.â€?

Engineering across Southampton did well across the board, continuing a run of featuring in the top 10 for Aeronautical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering every year since the Complete University Guide was first published in 2008. Overall, the University of Southampton consolidated its position among the UK’s top 20 universities by placing 17th.

The Complete University Guide – one of three principal UK-based rankings for UK universities – is based on a wide range of criteria including UCAS entry tariffs, student satisfaction, research excellence and intensity, graduate prospects, student-staff ratio, university spending on academic services and facilities, the percentage of first degree graduates achieving a first or upper second class honours degree, and degree completion.

Students from Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton joined the best student hackers from the UK’s 13 Academic Centres of Excellence (ACE) in Cyber Security Research at the inaugural Inter-ACE Cyberchallenge.

The event took place at the University of Cambridge on Saturday 23 April 2016 and was organised in partnership with Facebook. The competing teams of four came from 10 of the 13 Universities accredited as ACEs under the EPSRC/GCHQ scheme: Imperial College, Queens University Belfast, Royal Holloway University of London, University College London, University of Birmingham, University of Cambridge, University of Kent, University of Oxford, University of Southampton, University of Surrey. Challenges were set and administered by Facebook and competing institutions also submitted optional “guest challengesâ€? for others to solve.

The players competed in a ‘Capture the Flag’ information security competition involving both ‘jeopardy’ style and ‘attack-defence’ style aspects. Game progress was visualized on a world map with teams attempting to conquer and re-conquer world countries by solving associated challenges.

The University of Southampton team performed well throughout the competition, leading for the first half and never falling below second for five hours. The decisive final five minutes put Southampton into third place behind the University of Cambridge and Imperial College.

The team was led by Mohit Gupta, a final year student in MEng Electronic Engineering with Artificial Intelligence and also comprised, Yordan Ganchev (final year BSc Computer Science), Murray Colpman (final year MEng Computer Science), and Kier Davis (first year MEng Electronic Engineering with Computer Systems). Mohit was delighted with the result, saying: “While we were disappointed to not get first place, third is still a great achievement for the team and we look forward to improving upon this result in future years. What was really pleasing was the fantastic response when we asked for people to take part in the competition. There were so many people that we ended up running a selection process.â€?

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of the University’s Cyber Security Academy, attended as supervisor. He said: "It was a privilege to witness the excitement, passion and commitment of the players, who worked head down for 5 hours without stops. And of course, I am delighted with our results, which goes to show the quality of the work we are doing at the Cyber Security Academy.â€?

The Inter-ACE Cyberchallenge also featured a competition for individuals from the ACEs. Bronze in this competition also went to a Southampton student, David Young – a final year Maths student who participated remotely.

The International Consortium of Nanotechnologies (ICoN) – led by the University of Southampton and supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation has announced its first ten PhD studentships - three of which are placed with researchers from Electroincs and Computer Science at Southampton.

Launched in September 2015, ICoN aims to build capacity and knowledge in the application of nanotechnologies to support safety of life and property – addressing issues outlined in Lloyds Register Foundation’s ‘Foresight Review of Nanotechnology’. The doctoral studentships offered by ICoN will explore these issues, focusing on themes such as miniaturisation of sensor technology, big data, engineered smart materials, energy storage and nanoparticles.

The projects led by Southampton are:

• "Single Electron Manipulation in Silicon Nano-Wire for Quantum Technologies" - under the supervision of Professor Shinichi Saito
• "Nano/Micro- Electro-Mechanical-System self-powered sensors for infrastructure safety monitoring" - under the supervision of Dr Jize Yan
• "Ultrafast Nanostructuring of Wide Bandgap SiC for Electronics in Harsh Environments" - under the joint supervision of Professor Kees de Groot and Professor Jamie Phillips of the University of Michigan

The full list of studentships awarded can be found on the LRF ICON website.

Wednesday 12 March 2003 in the Turner Sims Concert Hall (Building 52 on Highfield Campus map)