Electronic engineers from the University of Southampton have demonstrated the latest advances in inductive wireless links at a prestigious design conference in San Francisco.

Professor William Redman-White and a team of researchers from the School of Electronics and Computer Science presented a new technique that breaks a classical bandwidth limit at the 2019 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

The Southampton research has addressed fundamental issues in inductive link transmitters, intended for wireless power, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and security systems, where power and data need to be delivered simultaneously.

Such links are limited to simple modulation schemes, with an achievable data rate conventionally limited by circuit compromises required for good power efficiency and range. This is a particular problem where security is required as it restricts the amount of cryptographic information that can be transferred in a practical situation.

The Southampton team included Dr Rares Bodnar, Teerasak Lee and Henry Kennedy, who presented the latest paper at the conference's Techniques for Low-Power & High-Performance Wireless session at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.

The paper's new technique employs instantaneous adaptive and predictive antenna coil tuning, allowing data modulation rates to exceed classical bandwidth/Q-factor limits, as well as presenting a fully integrated mixed analogue-digital IC implementation in a smart-power complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

ISSCC is the world's premier integrated circuit design conference, attracting nearly 4,000 industrial and academic delegates from around the worlds, including large numbers from nearby Silicon Valley. This year's gathering united experts around the theme 'Envisioning the future'.

The event provided a poignant milestone for Professor William Redman-White, a past chairman for the conference's analog committee, as he retires to become an Emeritus Professor.

"As well as obtaining two patents for the technique, this is the second time the team has presented a paper at this conference, a very rare achievement for academic submissions from a single project," he says. "It has marked a particularly satisfying final conclusion to 35 years of analogue IC design research in Southampton."

For more information on the project, see the full ISSCC 2019 paper at A High-Q Resonant Inductive Link Transmit Modulator/Driver for Enhanced Power and FSK/PSK Data Transfer Using Adaptive-Predictive Phase-Continuous Switching Fractional-Capacitance Tuning and the predecessor paper Self-Tuning Resonant Inductive Link Transmit Driver Using Quadrature-Symmetric Phase-Switched Fractional Capacitance.

Cyber security experts from the University of Southampton have joined forces with the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) to tackle the evolving use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activities.

Over 200 representatives from law enforcement agencies, government and academia met for a cryptocurrency masterclass at Southampton Science Park's AXIS Conference Centre in a formal launch of the partnership with the Cyber Security Academy.

Virtual currencies are being used in increasing quantities on domains such as the dark web, requiring new approaches and legislation to be enacted by police authorities. The cryptocurrency masterclass drew upon best practice and expertise from a range of speakers to prepare attendees for this new challenge.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of the Cyber Security Academy, said: "It is important that academia and law enforcement agencies come together to apply the latest outcomes from the UK's research and innovation. I am delighted to have formally launched this partnership with SEROCU which I hope will make a difference in police's increasingly challenging and complex criminal investigations in this arena."

SEROCU is a police unit delivering a cohesive regional response to serious organised crime within the boundaries of Hampshire Constabulary, Thames Valley Police, Surrey Police and Sussex Police.

Detective Chief Superintendent Jess Wadsworth, Head of SEROCU, and Professor Mark Spearing, President and Vice-Chancellor (interim) at Southampton, delivered keynote speeches applauding the formation of the new partnership at the recent masterclass.

Dr Federico Lombardi, a Lecturer in Cyber Security, also delivered a presentation on Cyber Range for Blockchain Platforms, building upon findings of a Group Design Project recently carried out under his supervision by Electronics and Computer Science students.

Attendees at the all-day event included representatives from local police authorities, the National Crime Agency and British Transport Police.

Sarah Martin, Cyber Security Academy Collaboration Manager, added: "This new partnership is an exciting opportunity to build on our previous cyber crime symposiums, to host regular annual events with different themes between law enforcement and cyber security."

The University of Southampton will be part of a new consortium confronting emerging cyber security challenges in the UK.

Professor Vladimiro Sassone, Director of Southampton's Cyber Security Academy, will be part of the new Security, Privacy, Identity and Trust Engagement Network (SPRITE+) which will launch this September.

SPRITE+ will harness outstanding UK research expertise in security, privacy, identity and trust over the next four years as it addresses priority challenges set by academic, business and industry, government and civil stakeholders.

The network, which will be led by the University of Manchester, has been awarded £1.7 million funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The University of Southampton is building the next generation of cyber security leaders through MEng in Computer Science with Cyber Security and MSc in Cyber Security degree programmes. The SPRITE+ network will create new opportunities for summer, final year and PhD projects plus partnerships with industry that will enhance this learning experience.

Read the full story here.

A primary school girl's innovative idea to help her dad with a hearing impairment has inspired an engineering team at the University of Southampton to build and demonstrate a 'Super Hearing Dish'.

Isabelle Radley, a Year 4 pupil from Wonersh and Shamley Green CofE Primary School in Surrey, proposed the invention as part of a national scheme that encourages children to imagine engineering solutions for the world's problems.

Her sketched 'super hearing set' was selected to be prototyped from many entries to the Primary Engineer Leaders Award in the South of England. Experts at Southampton's Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) in the School of Engineering and the Public Engagement with Research Unit based their device on her vision and demonstrated it to her and dad, Matt, for the first time at this month's Science and Engineering Day.

"I designed the Super Hearing Set to help people who are hard of hearing listen to only one person in a room," Isabelle says. "My dad doesn't like it when everyone speaks at the same time because he can't hear what's being said. It is really exciting to have my design built and I hope that other people will be able to use it to help them in real life."

Professor of Hearing Science and Technology Dr Stefan Bleeck teamed up with MEng Electrical and Electronic Engineering student Raphael Chung Chi Hang to develop the hearing dish, which receives and processes audio from a microphone mounted on a parabolic dish.

The Super Hearing Dish incorporates Stefan's experience working with real time processing of sound using a Raspberry Pi. "The microphone mounted on the dish can be pointed to a particular direction to gather sound from just that direction," he explains. "Noise from other directions is received at a much lower level, enabling the user to follow a conversation or follow a particular person's speech more easily.

"Real time audio processing on this unit can then also be relayed to users wearing closed headphones to experience what they would hear if they have a hearing impairment and compare this with using a hearing aid or cochlear implant."

Stefan and his team will now produce several further versions which they intend to use in teaching and outreach.

Third year student Raphael designed and built the Super Hearing Dish as part of the Excel Southampton Internship Programme and led the coding of the Raspberry Pi unit.

"Having chosen the internship project to develop my skills and also enjoyed some outreach work with children, I was pleased to be able to talk to Isabelle and her class at her primary school," he says. "The children asked some interesting questions and made suggestions, having just learned about ears and hearing. Each year many schools promote engineering through the Primary Engineer Leaders Award and classes enjoy meeting a range of engineers."

Southampton student engineers also developed the Primary Engineer Leaders Award southern region prototype in 2017-18, when a group of final year Mechanical Engineering students created a Fun Noisy Rubbish Bin. The interactive bin speaks to children to encourage them to recycle and includes responsive eyes and a robotic mouth. The mouth only opens for waste items which are suitable for recycling and tells the child fun facts about how such materials are re-used.

A display of selected concepts entered for the 2019 Primary Engineer Leaders Award will accompany the School of Engineering Design Show, which will open on Thursday 13th June. It is hoped that further projects will follow, showcasing Southampton's support for the Award's motto 'engineers inspiring children inspiring engineers'.

University of Southampton student Dominika Woszczyk impressed in the final of Bright SCIdea Challenge 2019 with her pitch for an AI assistant to support young people's mental health.

The aspiring entrepreneur, who has nurtured multiple startup ideas during her MSc Artificial Intelligence (AI) degree, presented to a panel of expert judges in the national competition that brings together the brightest young business minds to pitch science-based innovations.

Dominika and team members from the Universities of Bristol and Edinburgh were one of five shortlisted entries in the final at the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) in central London on Tuesday.

They combined their collective experience to pitch BesideYou, an application for students and young adults that would offer a personalised programme to cultivate better mental health with support from an AI chatbot as a 'journey buddy'.

"My MSc's Deep Learning and Advanced Machine Learning modules inspired me to think how current commercial chatbots and apps could be improved and applied to help people," Dominika says. "We started with the idea for an AI therapist for teenagers and this approach then evolved as we developed a business plan. We are so happy to have reached the final as we know a lot of the other competitors who had some very impressive ideas."

The Bright SCIdea Challenge supports participants in business planning and pitch training, and offers valuable networking opportunities within the commercial scientific community. The annual competition, which is sponsored by Synthomer and INEOS, rewards winners with a £5,000 prize.

Dominika spearheaded the BesideYou entry, approaching MSc Artificial Intelligence student Raffaele Piccini from the University of Edinburgh and BSc Electrical and Electronic Engineering student Diane Remmy from the University of Bristol to unite for the contest.

"We want to give people experiencing mental health problems the opportunity to get support for free and anytime," Dominika says. "We differentiate ourselves by providing a journey buddy that you can talk to using a contextual chatbot, motivating you along your personalised plan and rewarding you when you reach milestones."

Dominika was crowned the winner of the University's Future Worlds accelerator Startup Pitch Off in September with her vision for an AI language learning assistant and is hoping to pitch to investors in the Future Worlds Dragons' Den competition this May.

She is currently undertaking a 'chatbot for interactive storytelling' project within her MSc thesis and is planning to pursue a PhD related to natural language processing and speech recognition after her degree.