This year's Engineering and Technology Careers Fair, taking place on Thursday 13 February, will welcome an outstanding range of companies at the forefront of autonomous systems development and technology integration.

The Fair has a strong reputation for the quality of companies that attend and for the important role it plays in enabling Southampton students to meet potential employers across many sectors, including digital technology, finance, security, consultancy, transport, and communications.

International industry leaders such as, Cisco, Bloomberg, IBM, Nike, Goldman Sachs, and Schlumberger will be joining some of the UKs most respected consultancies such as Roke Manor Research and Northrop Grumman, with significant representation from niche startup companies in areas such as artificial intelligence, data, finance, and cyber security.

Joyce Lewis, Careers Fair Director, says: "The Fair provides a fantastic opportunity for students to get a really wide-ranging view of the breadth of opportunities for them in the engineering and technology industries. Southampton students already have an excellent reputation for their success in the jobs market and the quality of the companies attending the Fair is a great endorsement of this".

The event will take place in Garden Court on Highfield Campus, with around 2,000 students expected to attend from all University departments. In addition to the global companies attending, there will also be strong representation from the University of Southampton Science Park at Chilworth, with companies looking for the brightest students to join their high-tech ventures.

The event, which has been running for 12 years, is organised by the Universitys Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Engineering and Physical Sciences, says: "We very much welcome the high quality of companies coming to Southampton to employ our students. They are taking part in the Fair because they are aware of the quality of our students and their ability to innovate and support the development of future technologies".

There are very exciting careers to be built in these new industries and we value our strong links with companies and the excellent relationships built up over time. Many of the stands will include Southampton graduates, demonstrating the contribution that our students are making to the UKs industrial and business success.

Students attending the Fair can expect strong interest from leading employers across the technology industries and from companies that are seeking excellent graduates with high-level competence in technology and engineering as well as business and the sciences. Many University of Southampton opportunities will also be of interest to the students including the Future Worlds startup accelerator, research group opportunities, as well as new directions in teaching.

Our environment is based on our strong research reputation and continues to ensure that companies want to promote their opportunities to our students, Bashir adds. For our part we do our best to increase our students awareness of career opportunities, right from their very first week at the University. We want to prepare them to find the job they want, and raise their aspirations of future achievement and support their future success.

The Fair will run from 11.00am - 3.30pm in Garden Court, B38, on Thursday 13 February. For further information contact Joyce Lewis, tel. +44(0)23 8059 5453; j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk.

Academics, industry experts and policymakers are uniting to tackle digital research challenges through a new network led by a consortium of five universities.

The Security, Privacy, Identity, Trust and Engagement NetworkPlus (SPRITE+), which is co-directed by the University of Southampton's Professor Vladi Sassone, will coordinate a multi-disciplinary approach to address current and future problem themes.

Over 100 attendees marked the launch of the network last month in an evening reception in Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery and a two-day meeting of Expert Fellows and stakeholders that debated the spectrum of issues.

Professor Sassone, Director of Southampton's Cyber Security Academy, says: I am proud to be a co-director of SPRITE+. This national network starts with the ambition to gather together the multi-disciplinary community of trust, identity privacy and security researchers, and to do so in lasting fashion. Southampton's main role in the network will be to organise professional and industrial training and this fits very well with our ongoing commitment in the Cyber Security Academy.

SPRITE+ is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and led by the University of Manchester, Imperial College London, Lancaster University, Queen's University Belfast and the University of Southampton. The hub has more than 120 Expert Fellows from academic and non-academic contexts covering disciplines including engineering, social sciences and humanities.

Professor Emma Barrett, a Professor of Psychology, Security and Trust at the University of Manchester and Director of Sprite+, says:I am delighted at the amount of interest, enthusiasm and energy that SPRITE+ has already generated. We have had engagement from across the academic community and from research end users in business, government, police and civil society. All are eager for more collaboration on issues of security, privacy, identity and trust in our digital world, and the SPRITE+ team is looking forward to creating opportunities to make that happen.

You can find out more about the Network on the SPRITE+ website.

New detection software created at the University of Southampton is using artificial intelligence to fight the illegal trafficking of wildlife.

The FloraGuard project, led by criminologist Dr Anita Lavorgna and computer science lecturer Dr Stuart Middleton, extracts data from hundreds and forums and marketplaces to alert authorities to suspicious behaviour.

The commerce of exotic wild plants has increased in Western countries over the past 60 years, triggering a rise in illegal trades that threaten and destroy numerous species and important natural resources.

The Southampton research, which is partnered with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the UK Border Force, converts information into charts, diagrams and pictures which can be used in investigations or to trigger new ones.

Read the full article in the University's Research Highlights section.