Professor George Chen from the University of Southampton has become a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) for his contributions in the field of electrical insulation and dielectrics.

The Professor of High Voltage Engineering, who is Head of Southampton's Electrical Power Engineering research group, now holds the highest grade of membership at the world's largest professional association for advancing technology for humanity.

He is the tenth academic in Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton to receive the prestigious honour.

Through its 400,000 plus members in 160 countries, the IEEE is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

"IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the Institute's fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation," George says. "I am really honoured to join this esteemed group from the global community of electrical and electronic engineers."

Less than 0.1 per cent of voting members are selected annually for the member grade elevation, following a rigorous evaluation by the IEEE Fellow Committee.

George has been recognised for his contributions to space charge measurement and interpretation for dielectric performance improvements.

Southampton's Electrical Power Engineering research group, based in Electronics and Computer Science, combines classical electrical engineering with physics, materials science, chemistry, computer science and mathematics.

Its facilities include the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory, a world class centre for research into dielectric materials and insulation systems, as well as high voltage and related phenomena.

Researchers from the University of Southampton have won an Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Award for their work simulating black silicon nanostructures for photovoltaic applications.

Members of the Sustainable Electronic Technologies (SET) research group scooped first prize in the Model Based Engineering category in a ceremony in central London on Wednesday 13th November.

The team, led by Dr Stuart Boden, with PhD student Jack Tyson and Senior Research Fellow Dr Tasmiat Rahman, is part of an investigation supported by the Black Silicon Photovoltaics grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

“We are proud that our work has been recognised by the IET through this prestigious award”, Stuart said. “It was an honour to be shortlisted and we were absolutely thrilled to win first prize in our category; I’d like to thank my team for their excellent efforts.”

The IET Innovation Awards recognise and celebrate the very best new innovations across the breadth of science, engineering and technology. At the ceremony, which was hosted by TV presenter and comedian Alex Brooker, top engineers from industry and academia gathered to celebrate the success of the shortlisted candidates in each category.

The judges praised the innovative approach taken by the Southampton team in using a finite element method together with randomisation algorithms to more accurately predict the spectral distribution of light reflected from nanoscale-textured silicon surfaces. Accurate modelling is essential to improving materials and the research’s applied mathematics will directly enable improvements in solar cell efficiency.

Photovoltaics are the fastest growing renewable energy technology and are expected to account for 30% of global power generation capacity in the coming decades. Silicon photovoltaics account for more than 90% of the market, where significant technological improvements can ensure further price reductions and increased deployment.

The £950,000 Black Silicon Photovoltaics research project has brought together project teams in Southampton and Oxford to draw on close collaborations with institutes at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany, and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. The methods developed as part of the project are being applied to the leading solar cell technologies based on mono- (c-Si) and multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si).

Professor Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton has been announced on the 10th annual UKtech50 - a list of the most influential people in the UK tech sector.

The Regius Professor of Computer Science is the only academic to appear on the prestigious list, published by Computer Weekly.

Dame Wendy is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute and was recently announced by the UK government as the first Skills Champion for AI in the UK.

She has also appeared today on BBC iPlayer in a People of Science interview with Professor Brian Cox, discussing the life and discoveries of one of her personal heroes, Alan Turing.

Computer Weekly's annual UKtech50 represents a definitive list of the movers and shakers in UK technology and includes business and industry leaders that are driving the role of technology in the UK economy.

"This list is full of people who I admire hugely and who have done so much to help create such a strong tech sector in the UK," Dame Wendy said. "I'm amazed that I get into such a list, especially being the only academic to do so."

Dame Wendy appeared in a list of 30 "AI gurus" in Europe to follow on Twitter last week on Sifted, a new site for the continent’s innovators and entrepreneurs.

"The UK must continue to build on its strength in the tech sector over the coming decade, particularly in AI, to retain our world leading status in this area," she added. "This means continuing to invest in tech start-ups and helping them grow into companies that can compete on the global stage.

"But it also means continuing to invest in our world leading universities, because this really does give us an edge internationally compared to other countries of a comparable size to the UK."

Dame Wendy spearheaded the launch of the Z21 Innovation Fund in 2017, drawing together funding from the University of Southampton and the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership to capitalise on the potential of emerging University web startups.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 New Year’s Honours list, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi has called on higher education partners to embrace machine-learning and data science in the curriculum to deliver 21st Century engineering as a world leader in the field.

Addressing the UK's deep tech hub at the TechWorks Awards in London, the Dean of Faculty at the University of Southampton told the sector it was the "opportune time" to consider the range of graduate skills needed to design the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He suggested a blurring of traditional boundaries between the distinct disciplines of computer science and engineering, leading to Digital Engineering.

It is estimated that the UK needs to produce an extra 20,000 graduate engineers every year in order to sustain the electronics industry, with a further 260,000 skilled people needed to meet its ambitions to invest 2.4% of GDP in R&D by 2027 and establish the UK as the most innovative country in the world.

"As engineers we have a strong obligation to establish the UK as a global leader in the AI systems field and to ensure this exciting opportunity fulfils its promise," Bashir said.

"I believe passionately that we must take action now to ensure that our future programmes provide the people and the expertise to lead the engineering design, management and training of the AI systems of the future – systems that will underpin autonomous transportation, intelligent large-scale infrastructures, and smart personalised healthcare."

Next-generation AI hardware will need to be more powerful, more reliable and more cost efficient to deliver a more connected and automated world.

"Engineering AI systems is a collaborative process and cannot be achieved solely by academics working on their own," he warned. "Strong partnership between academia, business and the engineering professional institutes is essential to ensure the design and relevance of these new courses to the existing and emergent industries for which we urgently need to train our graduates."

Bashir is an Arm Professor of Computer Engineering with a worldwide reputation for research into energy efficient and reliable embedded systems. Earlier this year, he was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for his services to engineering and industry.

His full article - Engineering AI systems: too crucial to leave to chance? - is available to read in full here.