Wireless communications expert Professor Lajos Hanzo has featured in Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers 2018 for the significant influence of his career over the past decade.

The Head of the Next Generation Wireless Research Group is one of 11 academics from the University of Southampton to be highlighted by the report, which recognises exceptional research performance from multiple papers that rank in the global top 1% by citations.

Lajos is among just 5 researchers based in the United Kingdom and only 96 worldwide included specifically for the field of Computer Science, although his subject is wireless communications.

He has built an international reputation for telecommunications in over three decades at Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and Southampton is now the top-ranked university for Telecommunication Engineering in Europe according to the 2018 ShanghaiRanking's Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.

Lajos says: “It’s been a huge privilege to collaborate with a team of 119 talented PhD students in ECS and a similar number of academic colleagues over the decades – sincere thanks for the enlightenment I gained from our deep-routed discussions, in particular to Professors Sheng Chen (ISI Highly-Cited), Rob Maunder and Lie-Liang Yang, as well as to Drs El-Hajjar, Soon-Xin Ng and Rong Zhang.â€?

The Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers for 2018 identified scientists and social scientists across 21 fields used in Essential Science Indicators (ESI). The report surveyed papers published and cited between 2006 and 2016, ranking entries in the top 1% by citations for their ESI field and year.

The 2018 list contains 6,078 Highly Cited Researchers, including 2,020 researchers identified as having exceptional performance across several fields.

Two other researchers from Lajos’ Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences also appear in the list. Professor Mark Sullivan (who has recently been announced as the new Head of Physics and Astronomy) is featured in the field of Space Science, while Professor Nikolay Zheludev is honoured for his cross-field expertise within the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics.

Lajos’ international career has included academic posts in Hungary, Germany and the UK. He has co-authored 18 John Wiley/IEEE Press books totalling around 10,000 pages on mobile radio communications. Earlier this year, he was awarded his second European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Fellow Grant totalling €2.5 million to contribute to the conception of the wireless Quantum Internet.

Four academics from the School of Electronics and Computer Science have been named Fellows of The Alan Turing Institute as part of a new cohort from the University of Southampton.

Professors Elena Simperl, Mike Wald, Sarvapali Ramchurn and Dr George Konstantinidis will address complex research challenges within the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.

The researchers are among 19 leading academics at the University that will now bring to the Institute specific projects covering topics from machine learning for space physics to AI and inclusion.

The Alan Turing Institute was founded in 2015 to undertake world-class research that is applied to real-world problems, drives economic impact and societal good, leads the training of a new generation of scientists and shapes public conversation around data.

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Entrepreneurs from the University of Southampton have launched an intelligent gift recommendation service to inspire creative and joyful gift giving this Christmas.

Electronic Engineering graduates Dylan Grey and Mike Oakley have created BOON, a free website that uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and personality deduction techniques to generate tailored gift inspiration.

BOON selects gift ideas specific to users and their recipients based on responses to several questions and an online catalogue from over 100 retailers.

Co-founder Dylan explains: “We’re on a mission to help people re-discover the joy of giving this Christmas by taking the pain out of finding the perfect gift for a loved one. BOON provides inspiration unique to your needs in a matter of minutes, so you no longer have to trawl through countless gift sites getting overwhelmed with all the options.â€?

Dylan and Mike graduated from the School of Electronics and Computer Science this summer and have based their business in the University’s new Future Worlds Accelerator on Highfield Campus.

“When I entered my final year, I thought a lot about what I wanted to do after graduation. I decided to start my own company, but it was only after talking to Resident Mentor Ben Clark in Future Worlds that I realised I shouldn’t wait until after graduating,â€? Dylan says.

“Degrees are a lot of work but I was really excited about the business and devoted as much time as I could to it. And I’m pleased I did; if I hadn’t started working on BOON during my degree, I wouldn’t have got all the amazing support from Future Worlds that has been so beneficial to get the company to the stage it’s at now.â€?

Future Worlds helps nurture aspiring University entrepreneurs and cutting-edge technologies through one-to-one support and a network of seasoned founders, investors and millionaire entrepreneurs. BOON emerged this spring when the team first pitched the idea at an annual Dragons’ Den-style investment event. The entrepreneurs have since been accelerated on their journey through early-stage funding from the Web Science Institute’s Z21 Innovation Fund.

The pair now have a growing team and in January will be showcasing the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the largest consumer technology show in the world.

The BOON gift service is available now at https://www.boon.gifts/.

Researchers from the University of Southampton are using machine learning techniques to develop the next generation of wear sensing in machines such as planes and cars.

A multi-disciplinary team, including expertise from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), have been awarded over £1m to miniaturise existing sensing technology within the field of tribology, the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion.

The project, which is a partnership with General Electric Company, Schaeffler KG, Senseye and Shell, aims to shed light on the fundamental principles of early wear. Researchers will focus on developing and investigating how well electrostatic micro-sensing arrays with embedded electronics detect tribological transitions related to wear and friction in machine component contacts.

Professor Robert Wood, Principal Investigator, says: ‘This grant will allow us to build on 20 years of research at Southampton into electrostatic based condition monitoring of tribological contacts to allow far better temporal and spatial resolution and thus earlier detection of distress.â€?

The four-year Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council project will draw upon expertise from Dr Terry Harvey from the National Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS) together with Professor Mahesan Niranjan and Dr Nick Harris from ECS. Researchers identified that the combination of data from arrays of embedded sensors close to the wear surface, being developed within ECS, and the application of advanced machine learning techniques to the resulting data streams offer the promise of more accurate and earlier prognostic data for machines despite the variation of use cases that may be seen.

“New sensors will be the link that enables the practical application of machine learning to mechanical systems, which will unlock much more than just new information on wear,â€? Dr Harris explains. “The combination of experience from nCATS and ECS, together with the industrial partners, will allow new approaches to condition monitoring and predictive maintenance across a broad spectrum of industry.â€?

Professor Niranjan says, “The subject of machine learning is of increasing importance in a wide range of multi-disciplinary problems involving large and complex datasets. Here in Southampton, we are proud of our research in the subject, as well as its integration into our taught programmes at undergraduate and masters’ levels. In this project, I am particularly excited about using modern machine learning algorithms combined with domain knowledge and data gathered from specifically designed instruments and experiments.â€?

The grant will build on existing collaborations from two Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professors to nCATS from Schaeffler and GE Aviation.

Dr Harvey says, “We have been working on electrostatic sensor for many years now, delving into the fundamental of what of the sensors are seeing but all at the macro-scale. This project will allow us to push the technology forward by developing arrays of micro-electrostatic sensors that will us detect charge at far higher resolutions than previously possible but also effectively map it. This will mean that the amount of information being processed is multiplied and this is where machine learning will play a vital part in the project.â€?

Postgraduate researcher Ben Fletcher from the University of Southampton has been awarded a prestigious scholarship from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

The electronics engineer, who is completing an internship in the Arm-ECS Research Centre, will use the funding to continue his exploration of low cost 3D integration for the Internet of Things.

He was presented the prize at the IET Achievement Awards ceremony in Central London last month, which celebrated high-quality engineers and encouraged them to develop successful academic research careers.

Ben spent the first 18 months of his PhD within Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science and started an internship with Arm in the summer. He is now pre-dominantly based at Arm’s Cambridge office, within the Devices Circuits and Systems research group.

“I’m delighted to have been awarded a postgraduate prize,â€? Ben says. “The IET Postgraduate Awards are highly competitive, so this is a great affirmation that the research I’m doing is innovative and significant. I have already been working with industrial sponsors at Arm to fabricate a test chip demonstrating the technology that I have been developing. The award will provide useful funding for the testing and evaluation of this chip but is also a great way of raising the profile of my research and reaching a wider audience.â€?

Integrated circuits (ICs), or silicon chips, are the building blocks of almost all electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops and tablets. Three dimensional integrated circuits are a new generation of ICs that integrate multiple layers vertically, allowing devices to incorporate more diverse functionality and function quicker, whilst consuming less power. Ben’s research is investigating innovative ways of communicating data between the layers within these new stacked 3D-ICs using wireless communication through inductive coupling.

IET Postgraduate Awards are made on a competitive basis and are assessed by the IET Scholarships Committee. In total, five scholarships and prizes have been awarded this year.

Nick Winser CBE, IET President, said: “Our Postgraduate Scholarships and Prizes form part of the IET’s annual investment of over £1 million in the next generation of engineers. The recipients are carrying out leading research at some of the world’s most recognised universities and their research is supporting the advancement of knowledge throughout the global engineering and technology community.â€?

First year Computer Science student Wojciech Rozowski from the University of Southampton has devised a new synchronisation element for high-performance computing that can optimise access to shared data.

The innovation, which draws upon his studies of experimental hardware technology that started as a high school hobby, can improve the performance of operating systems on multi-core computers.

Wojciech presented the findings at last month’s Science: Polish Perspective 2018 conference at the University of Oxford, alongside hundreds of renowned Polish scientists.

The BSc Computer Science student has tapped into the potential of hardware transactional synchronisation extensions (TSX) technology, which has been shown to guarantee an up to 41% increase in performance of handling critical data.

“The efficiency of multi-core processors isn’t in linear relationship with the number of its cores,â€? Wojciech explains. “The increased number of cores is accompanied by the occurrence of more data conflicts. As a result of this study, a new synchronisation element has been created which combines TSX and spinlocks in such a way that it guarantees error-free handling of all critical data and it uses transactional memory optimisations wherever possible.â€?

Wojciech presented an early version of this project at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, USA, the world’s largest and most prestigious science fair for pre-university students. His work was acclaimed by academics and placed 4th for the Systems Software and Special Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.

“Developing this project has been an extremely interesting and fun experience for me and a great opportunity to learn new things in areas of parallel computing and computer systems,â€? Wojciech says. “My ultimate dream would be to write a scientific journal publication about this research. However, to do so I know that I must next improve my testing methods in such a way to get reliable data covering a broader range of test cases.â€? Wojciech has performed a series of benchmarking tests which proved the technology optimises data access in certain cases and his new synchronisation element has been successfully implemented into the Unix operating system, a popular platform for high-performance computing.