The University of Southampton

Published: 4 March 2013

The global influence and quality of the University of Southampton’s online repository of research is recognised in the latest world rankings.

Southampton’s EPrints repository of over 65,000 research records – and growing - is ranked first in the UK, fourth in Europe and fifth in the world according to the "The Ranking Web of World repositories". As an institution, the rankings place the University fifth in the UK, 16th in Europe and 92nd in the world.

Dr Leslie Carr, Director of the University’s EPrints Repository Software Team, praised the University’s continued recognition amongst the top institutions in the world for creating and maintaining open access to its world-leading research.

“As a University we are clearly at the forefront of the open access ‘revolution’,” said Dr Carr. “Our world ranking is an excellent achievement which underlines the success of our policies and practices which ensure that the world can access our scientific research via the World Wide Web for the benefit of all.”

The rankings are an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. The rankings have been published since 2006. The Ranking Web provides a list of mainly research-oriented repositories arranged according to web presence and the web impact (link visibility) of their contents with data obtained from major commercial search engines.

The University of Southampton is a recognised pioneer of both the open access and open data ‘revolutions’.

The University, through its expertise in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), is a world-leader in the technology and design of open access repositories as well as the introduction of institutional open access policy and strategy. Southampton was the first University in the UK to adopt a formal mandate requiring that academic staff make all of their published research available online through the institutional repository which now carries more than 65,000 records.

Southampton created the free repository software EPrints in 2000, which is now used by universities all over the world for Open Access self-archiving - known as ‘Green OA’. (The same Southampton doctoral student who created EPrints also went on to create MIT’s DSpace, the other free repository software being used worldwide.) Southampton had one of the first Green OA Repositories in 2001 and the world's first Green OA mandate in 2003. Southampton’s mandate recommendation was also followed by the 2004 UK Select Committee, which led to the RCUK Green OA mandate as well as Green OA mandates by over 250 universities and research funders worldwide. Ten years after it was made in 2003 Southampton’s recommendation to make Green OA self-archiving in institutional repositories mandatory for all submissions to the RAE has now been proposed by HEFCE for all submissions to REF after 2014.

Professor Stevan Harnad, one of the leading proponents of the OA movement, both as a Professor in ECS and one of the most respected members of the worldwide OA community, explains the importance of the UK's role in OA leadership at this crucial time, in an article published today (4 March): Worldwide open access: UK Leadership?

In December 2012, Southampton’s Open Data Service was awarded the Times Higher Education award for Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year. The initiative provides open access to University data to help improve the life of the University and local communities whilst increasing the transparency of institutional operations.

Also in December, Southampton Professors Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee took part in the formal opening of the UK government’s new Open Data Institute (ODI) which they jointly lead. Based in Shoreditch in East London's Tech City, the world-leading ODI will become the 'go to' venue for those seeking to create new products, entrepreneurial opportunities and economic growth from open data. The ODI will promote innovation driven by the Government’s Open Data Policy, helping the public sector use its own data more effectively and developing the capability of UK businesses to exploit the commercial value of open data.

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Published: 4 March 2013
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A research expedition to Edinburgh was recently completed by Dr Jack Hunter of the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory (TDHVL) with the aim of verifying the performance of a cable location rig using an operational cable circuit. The objective of the trip was to record the magnetic field produced by a buried 275 kV cable circuit at road surface level using a portable sensor array. The data acquisition system was developed as part of the EPSRC funded, "Mapping the Underworld" project. The system consists of 24 search coils on a portable frame, multiplexer, multi-channel sampling unit and a Laptop. The coils are distributed in a range of orientations such that a 3-D estimation of the magnetic field generated by the cable can be recorded over a period of 10 power cycles (0.2 s). A number of data sets were generated from several locations on the road in order to comprehensively map the magnetic field. The concept of the system is such that, if the geometry and configuration of the cables are known, an estimation of the cable location can be calculated from the recorded magnetic field distribution by solving a minimum fitting error problem. The next stage of the project involves developing a model for the cable configuration and finding if the estimated circuit depth is accurate.

The double circuit used in this study was laid in 2006/2007, energised in 2012 and is operated by Scottish Power; they consist of two sets of single-phase cables with extruded polymeric insulation and were manufactured by Prysmian. The double cable circuit connects Kaimes primary substation on the outskirts of the city to Dewer Place substation in the city centre (a distance of around 7.7 km). The cables are generally installed in trefoil formation at a depth of 825 mm. Several sections of the cable length had to be buried at a shallower depth due to local conditions – at these locations, steel plates were used to provide additional protection. Due to the varying layout of the cable circuits, it was identified as a useful test case to validate the operation of the cable mapping system.

Trials are also being carried out at test sites near Bristol and Wigan “The mapping the underworld project has had several successful outcomes and at Southampton we have developed a sensing tool that allows accurate estimation of buried power cable depth”. Said by Prof. P. L. Lewin – head of the TDHVL.

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Published: 8 March 2013
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The University of Southampton’s Head of the Web and Internet Science Group (WAIS) and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, will be a key speaker at the British Library’s Inspiring Science events.

Nigel will lead a lively TalkScience discussion entitled Open Data: What’s the Use? exploring the potential of open data and looking at what the open data revolution means for today’s society.

With the UK government, research councils, businesses and private individuals all releasing their data into the public domain he will highlight what the key drivers and enablers of open data are, and what barriers must be overcome to make the most of this new wealth of information.

At the talk on 19 March he will also discuss:

• What is open data and what is its potential for scientific research and innovation? • What are the economic, social and legal considerations for open data and do they matter? • What will motivate organisations and individuals to make their data available for all to use? • What are the areas where open data is already making an impact?

Nigel is Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Electronics and Computer Science. He is an advisor to the Prime Minister, helping to transform public access to UK government information resulting in the widely acclaimed data.gov.uk website that allows people to view public information, with the ability to combine different threads of data and analyse them in innovative ways. He is also co-founder and Chairman of the Open Data Institute that was launched last year to help the public sector use its own data more effectively and develop the capability of UK businesses to exploit the commercial value of open data.

His debate is part of the Inspiring Science event organised by the British Library. Running from 11-24 March, Inspiring Science is a series of events and activities that celebrates science and scientists. The programme is aimed at anyone with an interest in science and visitors can explore the Library’s collections and spaces to share the excitement surrounding scientific discovery, ideas and information.

To find out more about Inspiring Science and Nigel’s talk go to www.bl.uk/inspiring-science

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Published: 11 March 2013
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Innovative Southampton software company Snowflake Software held a Code-Off competition in the ECS Zepler Computer Lab last month, with the first prize being a summer internship working in the company’s Southampton office.

The competition was open to all ECS Computer Science students from years 1, 2, and 3, and the challenge was to design a web-based user interface for Snowflake’s GO Publisher Workflow product. The winner, against some excellent results from the group taking part, was Harry Cutts, second-year student in ECS, studying Computer Science with Mobile and Secure Systems.

Eddie Curtis, Snowflake’s Chief Technology Officer, commented: ‘One of the things about the Code-Off that never fails to surprise me is the amount that these guys can achieve in a single day with no advanced warning of the problem they will face. The standard was very high, making it tough to pick a winner, but Harry managed to win us over through the combination of thoughtful user interface design, choosing a good selection of technologies to apply and underpinning the whole ting with some sound engineering principles.’

Harry will work with Snowflake’s development team over the summer and is looking forward to the placement: ‘It sounds like a great place to work,’ he said, ‘and I’ve heard good things about it from Henco.' Last year's Code-Off was won by Hendrik (Henco) Appel.

Ian Painter, Snowflake MD and co-founder of the company, talked about the relationship between the company and ECS in a recent interview in Training and Simulation Forum: "[W]e invest pretty heavily in establishing relationships with the ‘best of the best’ – in a very competitive environment – with students at Southampton University, for example. Sometimes that relationship exists for two years before they join us – and the results are we have a competent, motivated and innovative team of people driving this company forward."

Read more about the Code-Off on the Snowflake Software website.

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Published: 15 March 2013
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ECS undergraduate student Arinze Ekwosimba gives an excellent account of the dedication and wide knowledge of ECS students in a feature interview with EEWeb – the Electrical Engineering Community.

Arinze, who is in the third year of his MEng degree in Electronic Engineering with Wireless Communications and has been President of the Student Chapter of the IEEE over the last year, explains why he was drawn to study engineering when growing up in Nigeria, and talks about the strengths of the ECS Electronic Engineering degree, particularly some of the project work involved, such as the D4 Systems Design Exercise. This is a very competitive design and build project, sponsored for the last four years by BAE Systems Detica. Last year’s project, in which Arinze took part and which he describes as his favourite project so far, involved the students in designing and building a football-playing robot which had to perform a certain number of tasks. The teams worked intensively towards a final challenge day (video), which also involved pitching their robots as commercial products.

“The highlight of my second year of studies was our D4 Group Design Project which saw me work in a team of 6 to design and implement a football-playing robot within two weeks,” says Arinze. “It remains one of the biggest challenges I have faced in my degree; my team had to work together to apply a lot of theoretical concepts we had been taught to achieve the project goals. In the end, we had a working prototype. The project exposed us to the great difference between theory and practice: simulations don’t always give the correct result! Above all though, it was fun, educative, and gave us something to be proud of.”

This year’s programme for the IEEE branch has been very successful, and also included the first time that ECS students had taken part in the worldwide IEEEXtreme 24-hour programme challenge. Eight Southampton teams competed very successfully, with many students on hand to provide support and encouragement over the 24 hours. The branch also has very successful partnerships with companies such as G-Research, Xyratex, Dialog Semiconductors, and Imagination Technologies.

Like many ECS engineering students, Arinze intends to enter the engineering profession when he graduates and to return to Nigeria to help the country’s development. “I strongly believe that most of the daunting challenges facing my home continent - poor health care delivery, poor power supply, lack of basic infrastructure, poor education and famine - can be addressed using the power of technology,” he says. “I want to return home and be part of the solution.”

Arinze makes a strong plea for the value of engineering to be fully recognized. “Technology is the future, with engineering at the centre,” he says, adding: “I hope engineering continues to contribute to the drive and success of humanity; all for a better world.”

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Published: 19 March 2013
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Representatives from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) will join other dignitaries to celebrate the formal opening of the University of Southampton Malaysia Campus this week.

Professor Peter Smith, Associate Dean Enterprise; Professor Neil White, Head of ECS; Professor Mark Zwolinski, Director of Programmes in ECS; and Dr Mark French, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Programme Leader, will be in Malaysia to see Adrian Newey, Southampton alumnus and record-breaking Formula One engineer, officially launch the new campus on March 21.

Adrian earned a First Class honours degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Southampton in 1980 and is now Chief Technical Officer of the Infiniti Red Bull Racing Formula One team. He has won more Formula One Constructors’ Championships than any other designer in the sport’s history.

The ECS team will be joined by special guests from Malaysia’s Ministry of Higher Education, the Iskandar Regional Development Agency and Iskandar Investment Berhad for the ceremony at the EduCity@Iskandar, in South Johor.

The occasion is especially significant for ECS as they will be offering a new degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) in Malaysia later this year.

ECS recently introduced the new degree that combines its academics’ long experience in teaching excellent electrical engineering and electronic engineering programmes into a unifying MEng degree in EEE.

The first two years of the MEng programme will be available at the new Malaysia Campus before the students transfer to Southampton to complete their course.

Professor Peter Smith said: “It is very exciting to be involved in the opening of the University of Southampton’s first overseas campus and our new EEE degree course. It will provide us with a great opportunity to be able to bring together electronics and electrical engineering in a way we haven’t done before and will be a new and exciting option for students.

“As well as offering the course in Malaysia we will also be running it at our Southampton campus and it is already proving popular with undergraduate applications in the UK.”

The University of Southampton Malaysia Campus welcomed its first students last September who enrolled on the University’s world-renowned degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Professor John McBride, Chief Executive Officer of the Malaysia Campus, said: “The University’s vision is to establish an engineering campus in Malaysia, to form close links with other partners in the region, and to attract high-quality undergraduate and postgraduate students from Malaysia, Indonesia and across the whole of the South East Asia Region.

“In particular, high-performance is a core part of the new campus curriculum and we’re particularly proud to have one of our high-performance graduates in Adrian Newey join us for this special occasion.”

Adrian, who is in Malaysia preparing for the country’s Formula One Grand Prix, said: “It is my great pleasure to support the University of Southampton for the formal opening of its Malaysia Campus. My degree from Southampton has certainly assisted me in my career and helped me develop, which I believe will also be true for Southampton’s future graduates in Malaysia and the UK.”

Find out more about the EEE degree.

Find out more about USMC.

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Published: 19 March 2013
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Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a leading academic in Web and Internet Science at the University of Southampton, is one of five joint winners of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

The prize, given by The Royal Academy of Engineering, honours Tim for inventing the World Wide Web and is awarded in recognition of ‘outstanding advances in engineering that have changed the world and benefited humanity’.

Tim won the award jointly with Marc Andreessen, who was honoured for his work in inventing the Mosaic browser, and Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn and Louis Pouzin, who were honoured for their work in developing the internet. The award will be presented by Queen Elizabeth II, this summer.

Tim says: “The prize recognises what has been a roller-coaster ride of wonderful international collaboration. Bob and Vint’s work on building the Internet was re-enforced by Louis’ work on datagrams and that enabled me to invent the web. Marc’s determined and perceptive work built on these platforms a product which became widely deployed across nations and computing platforms. I am honoured to receive this accolade and humbled to share it with them.

“I want the web to inspire and empower new generations of engineers — boys and, especially, girls — who will build, in turn, their own platforms, to improve our global society. I hope the message behind this award, along with the work we are doing with the World Wide Web Foundation and W3C, will assist in achieving the vision of a Web that is open, accessible and of value to all.”

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Published: 22 March 2013

Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) held a successful first MSc Open Day, which attracted a cross section of overseas students based in UK universities, as well as students from the EU and UK.

The Open Day provided an opportunity for students interested in studying postgraduate taught courses to explore the campus and see the excellent facilities on offer at the University of Southampton. They could discover more about the range and varieties of one year postgraduate Master of Science courses provided by ECS, learn about what studying an MSc involves and find out about developing a career. Current MSc students were also on hand to talk about their experiences and there were opportunities to chat to and ask questions of our world-leading academics at the cutting edge of their disciplines.

The day also included tours of some of ECS’s outstanding facilities including the high voltage electrical labs, computing suites, award-winning clean rooms and electronic labs, as well as looking at the accommodation available for postgraduate students.

Feedback from students on the day was overwhelmingly positive, and they were particularly appreciative of the opportunity to talk informally with academics and current MSc students.

Head of ECS Professor Neil White said: “Deciding to study for an MSc is a big step. By coming to our Open Day potential students could hear all about our programmes, talk to current students and get the information they need to make the right decision.”

www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/postgraduatetaught

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Published: 22 March 2013
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The first national equipment and facilities-sharing database has been launched for UK higher education – equipment.data.ac.uk.

Led by the University of Southampton and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on behalf of RCUK SSC Ltd, the new national aggregation portal allows institutions to both contribute to and access facilities and equipment data from a selection of UK universities.

The roots of the project go back to 2011 when the research councils set out new guidelines for equipment funding. Since then, the University of Southampton has worked with partners in the N8, M5 and GW4 consortia, led by the University of Leeds, Loughborough University and University of Bath, to establish whether there could be a common approach to sharing equipment and facilities between UK universities and the wider world.

This service forms part of the Data.ac.uk initiative - formed by the community of UK university open data projects. It provides a hub for linked open data in UK academia. Sub-domains such as learning-provider.data.ac.uk and cpv.data.ac.uk enable linked open data between UK universities, using what Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls ‘Cool URIs’ . Sites such as equipment.data.ac.uk, will aggregate open data from UK universities to provide useful services and downloads of the combined data. Data.ac.uk sub-sites are available to be administered by organisations with appropriate data. The Data.ac.uk team has been working with Gateway to Research which will give the public better access to information on research funded by the Research Councils.

The equipment portal - the technology for which has been a collaboration between a number of UK universities - provides a UK ‘shop window’ for higher education facilities and equipment supporting the need for greater accessibility and efficiency in the sector, and has the backing of RCUK as its preferred medium for national equipment data sharing.

The work undertaken is backed by Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton and Chairman and Co-Director of the recently opened Open Data Institute (ODI). From the outset, Nigel has been keen to see a solution that would allow better access to equipment drawing on publicly available datasets, and thereby drive more collaborations.

"It's exciting to take what we've learned from building data.southampton to create something which will be a hub for linked open data at UK universities and an exemplar for others to follow," said Christopher Gutteridge, lead developer of data.ac.uk and open-data community builder. Christopher's career has had an 'open' theme: from Open Access (lead dev on Eprints.org); Free Open Source software (see cgutteridge on Github) and now Linked Open Data services. In 2011 Chris was voted 'Best Comunity Builder' at Dev8d, the annual JISC deveopers event, and in 2012 he accepted the THE Outstanding ICT Intiative of the Year Award on behalf of the University for his work on data.southampton.

Adrian Cox, project manager at the University of Southampton, comments: “Regional consortia have been working together for some time to establish regional facilities and equipment portals. What was needed was a national solution that aggregated them together. Using the open data equipment portal, we are delivering a scalable solution, without the need for complex software systems. The next 12 to 18 months are going to be crucial in engaging more institutions to contribute and embed a culture of sharing.”

For further information contact: chris@data.ac.uk

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Published: 28 March 2013
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The newest student society in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has already scored two outstanding successes.

ECS Entrepreneurs launched in November 2012, to provide a forum and meeting place for enterprising students. Led by PhD student Zilong Wang, the group intends to support ECS students by providing opportunities for networking, support, workshops, and seminars. Last month over 90 students attended a lively and incisive talk given by Bruno Johnson, CEO of Cascoda Semiconductor Design, and ECS alumnus, on ‘How to make a start-up company'. The size of the audience demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit that already exists among ECS students.

ECS Entrepreneurs quickly followed up this success by organizing an afternoon Electronic Coding Challenge, in association with HackaSoton. The competition took place in the ECS Electronics Lab, and brought together over 30 students from Electronics and Software Development to build, break, hack and innovate. Teams of two or four students spent the afternoon on challenges which required varied skill-sets to complete and the winners received Raspberry Pi’s and cash prizes.

Having successfully demonstrated the interest in enterprise among ECS students, the new Society is now planning a wide programme of events for the year ahead.

ECS Entrepreneurs is on Facebook and Twitter.

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