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The University of Southampton has been ranked in the top 100 for Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Computer Science in the 2020 Best Global Universities rankings.
The influential international guide, published by US News & World Report, placed the University 52nd for EEE and 91st for Computer Science.
The 2020 Best Global Universities rankings feature 1,500 universities across 81 countries, with Southampton securing 10 subjects in the world's top 100 to achieve a 94th place overall.
Within the report's regional subject rankings, Southampton is fourth in the UK and ninth in Europe for EEE and ninth in the UK and 24th in Europe for Computer Science.
Professor Paul Lewin, Head of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), said: "This is further confirmation that ECS is internationally recognised as a research-led School. I am particularly pleased that in terms of Electrical and Electronic Engineering we are seen as one of the top ten Schools in Europe and that across the whole School our published work is being highly cited."
The global rankings consider 13 indicators to measure academic research performance as well as global and regional reputation.
In EEE, Southampton was ranked 50th in the world for total citations and the number of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited. In Computer Science, Southampton was ranked 37th for the percentage of publications that are among the 10 percent most cited and 38th for the percentage of papers that are among the top one percent most cited.
ECS represents two of five subject areas within the University's Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences to have achieved top 100 rankings in the global guide.
Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and general Engineering (comprising Aerospace, Civil, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering) were placed 44th, 62nd and joint 95th respectively.
Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Faculty, Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: "I'm very pleased to see five Faculty subject areas featuring in the top 100 of Best Global Universities rankings, reflecting the excellent standard set by our Schools across research, education and enterprise and the opportunity we now have to capitalise on this success."
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2022
Bossens, David and Bishop, Nicholas (2022) Explicit Explore, Exploit, or Escape (E4): near-optimal safety-constrained reinforcement learning in polynomial time. Machine Learning. (doi:10.1007/s10994-022-06201-z).
Bossens, David and Tarapore, Danesh (2022) Quality-Diversity Meta-Evolution: customising behaviour spaces to a meta-objective. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. (doi:10.1109/TEVC.2022.3152384). (In Press)
Bossens, David, Ramchurn, Sarvapali and Tarapore, Danesh (2022) Resilient robot teams: a review integrating decentralised control, change-detection, and learning. Current Robotics Reports. (doi:10.1007/s43154-022-00079-4).
2021
Thomas, Toby, Bossens, David and Tarapore, Danesh (2021) ASVLite: a high-performance simulator for autonomous surface vehicles. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). pp. 2249-2255 . (doi:10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561815).
Bossens, David and Tarapore, Danesh (2021) On the use of feature-maps for improved quality-diversity meta-evolution. In GECCO '21: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Companion. pp. 83-84 . (doi:10.1145/3449726.3459442).
Bossens, David and Tarapore, Danesh (2021) Rapidly adapting robot swarms with Swarm Map-based Bayesian Optimisation. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). pp. 9848-9854 . (doi:10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9560958).
Naiseh, Mohammad, Clark, Jediah, Divband Soorati, Mohammad and Bossens, David , (2021) Trusting machines? Cross-sector lessons from healthcare & security: conference report Southampton. University of Southampton 20pp. (doi:10.5258/SOTON/P0134).
2020
Guedes, Karla K. De Lima (2020) Integrating MOOCs into traditional UK higher education: lessons learnt from MOOC-blend practitioners. In, Borthwick, Kate and Plutino, Alessia (eds.) Education 4.0 revolution: transformative approaches to language teaching and learning, assessment and campus design. Research-publishing.net, pp. 29-36. (doi:10.14705/rpnet.2020.42.1084).
Bossens, David, Mouret, Jean-Baptiste and Tarapore, Danesh (2020) Learning behaviour-performance maps with meta-evolution. In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2020. pp. 49-57 .
Bossens, David and Tarapore, Danesh (2020) QED: using Quality-Environment-Diversity to evolve resilient robot swarms. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. (doi:10.1109/TEVC.2020.3036578).
Bossens, David (2020) Reinforcement learning with limited prior knowledge in long-term environments. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 205pp.
2019
Bossens, David, Townsend, Nicholas and Sobey, Adam (2019) Learning to learn with active adaptive perception. Neural Networks, 115, 30-49. (doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2019.03.006).
PhD
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Telephone: +44 (0) 23 8059 7529908095
Email: Yang.Hu@soton.ac.uk
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Telephone: +44 (0) 23 8059 7478
Email: grace.chai@soton.ac.uk
In a quest to understand the mind, David started the study of psychology, in which he obtained an MSc in Psychology (Theory and Research Option) from the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in the year 2014 (cum laude). Beyond the neuroscience and principles of cognition that inspired the quest, these years were also formative in terms of research methodology, with a strong emphasis on the scientific method, modelling techniques and statistics. While studying psychology, David found that he was more interested in designing systems that following intelligent principles (Artificial Intelligence), rather than trying to copy the -- potentially sub-optimal -- way in which humans reason (Psychology). Thus he went on to do an MSc in Artificial Intelligence (Engineering and Computer Science Option) also at the KUL, a study from which he graduated in the year 2015 (magna cum laude).
From late 2015 until 2019, David joined the University of Southampton for a PhD programme in artificial intelligence. During this project, he studied reinforcement learning in long-term unknown environments, where only few assumptions could be made on the learning environment: sparse reward environments may hamper the ability to learn any rewarding patterns; partial observability and limited knowledge hamper the ability to investigate the environment; many unknown tasks may be presented in sequence (lifelong learning).
Since 2019, David has started his postdoc to improve the robustness of robots to sudden faults or other types of changes in the environment. One current line of investigation is how to evolve a suitable behavioural repertoire, such that searching across this repertoire allows a rapid adaptation to unforeseen changes. Another line of investigation is how to perform realistic, efficient, online adaption based on such behavioural repertoires, despite the many challenges that may occur, such as the gaps between simulation and reality, the different faults affecting different robots, etc.
To get on idea of David's publications, you can visit his Google scholar page. David has also been covered in an Elsevier press article on the topic of active adaptive perception, a unique blend of the universalist and sub-symbolic approach towards artificial general intelligence.
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Telephone: +44 (0) 23 8059 7438003808
Email: xl8g15@soton.ac.uk
The University of Southampton is ranked 76th in the world for Engineering and Technology teaching and research, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World Rankings by Subject 2020.
The subject grouping, which includes Electrical and Electronic Engineering, has now received top 100 status for seven consecutive years at Southampton.
The World Rankings by Subject placed Southampton sixth amongst listed UK universities and 18th in Europe.
Electrical and Electronic Engineering is part of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and was placed third in the UK for career prospects in the Guardian University Guide 2020. In research, it was ranked first in the UK for volume and quality in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014.
Professor Paul Lewin, Head of ECS, said: “I am very pleased that ECS continues to be judged as world-leading in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It is a measure of success that reflects not only the hard work and dedication of our staff, but also our excellent facilities and the high quality of our students.”
The latest THE table for Engineering & Technology also includes the disciplines of General, Mechanical & Aerospace, Civil and Chemical Engineering.
Like the main THE World Rankings, the publication’s rankings by subject are based on criteria encompassing Teaching, International Outlook, Research, Citations and Industry Income.
The ranking follows similar results in the QS World Rankings by Subject published earlier this year where Southampton was rated in the top 100 (non-specific ranking between 51-100) for Civil & Structural, Electrical & Electronic and Mechanical, and Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering.
Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Faculty Engineering and Physical Sciences, said: “I welcome the news of Southampton’s international recognition in the Times Higher Education Top 100 University World Rankings by Subject for Engineering and Technology.
“This reflects excellence in engineering at Southampton across a broad range of related disciplines and attests to the long and established history of engineering education and innovation at the University.”