Representatives of the University and IBM met in Zepler Foyer last week to celebrate the long-standing collaboration between the two organizations. The partnership dates back over 25 years, and encompasses both research and student support, and the supply of computing resources. Electronics and Computer Science has provided the main focus for joint activity between the University and IBM, but many other Schools and departments have also been involved, including Mathematics, Chemistry, E-Science, Management, GeoData, and ISS. Most recently the collaboration between ECS and the IBM UK Laboratories at Hursley Park has been an important factor in the founding of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute in ECS. Also being celebrated today is the University's new £1.2 million IRIDIS IBM computer, which will support some of the University's largest e-science projects. Today's event will be followed by the 5th IBM Hursley Lecture, being given this year by Dr Caroline Kovac, General Manager of IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences, in the Turner Sims Concert Hall, at 6 pm: 'Information-based Medicine: A New Era in Patient Care.'

Professor Wendy Hall, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, has been named as one of 40 ‘technology masterminds’ by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers of the USA (IEEE). In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the IEEE’s influential Spectrum journal, 40 leading thinkers from the worlds of science and engineering were asked to cast their gaze over the technology landscape and consider what are the biggest advances of the last 40 years, and what will have the biggest impact over the coming decade. In her contribution, Professor Hall named the Web as the most important technology: ‘When I saw Tim Berners-Lee demonstrate it in 1991 I saw an interesting system, but not what it was going to do—and honestly I’m not sure he knew either,’ she said. Looking to the future, she added: ‘I’m fascinated by how computer scientists can learn from neuroscientists and vice versa. We’re talking about building increasingly complex adaptive systems that need to evolve and we have models of this throughout nature.’ Professor Hall has just completed a one-year term of office as President of the British Computer Society. She is a member of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology.

To meet the UK's massive demand for mobile communications it is essential for designers and programmers to work more closely together.

This is the premise of the UK's first Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Tools Forum, which is being held at the Institution of Electrical Engineers on Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 November, to review the tools used to design today's complex semiconductors and electronic systems.

The EDA Tools Forum, which is being co-organised and chaired by Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, brings together speakers from industry developers and design companies such as Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Cadence, Magma Design and ARM.

'We need mobile phones, PDAs and digital cameras and we want low power equipment at lower prices,' comments Professor Al-Hashimi. 'The challenge is to develop new EDA tools which will allow designers to produce error-free complex products much more quickly.'

As well as addressing the most pressing issues in the design, application and development of Electronic Design Automation tools, the conference will provide an opportunity for product designers and EDA tool-makers to look at how they can work more closely together and to review current barriers to progress. It will also enable newly-qualified engineers to familiarise themselves with the challenges ahead.

'Technology is changing all the time and EDA tools need to be updated,' comments Professor Al-Hashimi. 'This forum is about bringing together the developers of these tools and the designers to iron out the problems.'

UK scientists have designed a knowledge management system which could enable medical practitioners to make speedy, informed decisions about breast cancer patients. The project pulls together information which was previously held in separate locations and it has the potential to revolutionise patient diagnosis and management. The MIAKT project (Medical Imaging with Advanced Knowledge Technologies), aims to facilitate medical practitioners in diagnosing and treating breast cancer. The project is funded jointly by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Its first phase ends in January 2005 and the MIAKT team is now seeking further development funding. The system uses Semantic web technologies, enabling information from X-ray mammograms, MRI images, biopsy results and data from the clinician to be made available when the practitioners meet for their weekly Triple Assessment Procedure. Semantic web technologies allow information to be linked in such a way that it can be easily processed by machines. Practitioners can then view different types of images and scans, call up patient information, and automatically generate reports. It is also possible to investigate, annotate and analyse the data using web and Grid services. ‘This research draws on technologies in which the UK is a world leader,’ says Professor Nigel Shadbolt of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. ‘Eventually, e-health will be delivered using the web and incredibly powerful networks of computers. Medical practitioners will have the information and evidence at their fingertips to support decision-making that has a direct impact on us all.’ The ECS team, which is working with the University of Sheffield, the University of Oxford, King’s College London and the Open University on MIAKT, believes that there is potential to develop the project further. They are currently investigating the possibility of developing software to extend the capabilities of the system; additional funding will be needed to enable them to do this.

Professor Jeremy Baumberg is this year's winner of the Royal Society's prestigious Mullard Award.

The award has been made to Professor Baumberg for his work in nanoscience and nanotechnology and for his contribution to the national prosperity of the UK through the University's spin-out company Mesophotonics Ltd in developing optical chips. He will receive his award from Paul Boateng MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury on Monday 29 November at a Royal Society dinner.

The Mullard Award is given annually by the Council of the Royal Society to an individual who has an outstanding academic record in any area of natural science, engineering or technology, and whose work is currently making, or has the potential to make, a contribution to UK national prosperity. The Award is aimed at younger scientists, engineers and technologists and consists of a silver gilt medal, a prize of £2000 and a travel/conference grant of up to £1500.

Previous recipients of the Mullard Award include Lionel Pilkington who was honoured for his outstanding advances in the technology of glass manufacture.

Professor Baumberg says: 'It is a huge honour to receive the Mullard Award. The Award is a testament to the strength of purpose and dedication of a number of strong teams whom I am privileged to work with on nano-construction.'

Before taking up the post of Professor of Meso-/Nano-scale Science and Technology at Southampton in October 1998, Professor Baumberg explored novel ultrafast optoelectronics at the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory within the University of Cambridge for four years. He has also held an IBM research fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a research fellowship at Oxford. His current post is based in the School of Physics and Astronomy but he also works widely across the University with researchers in Electronics and Computer Science and other departments.

He has a wide range of research interests spanning nanophotonics, quantum dots, ultrafast coherent control, self-assembling nanostructures, semiconductor microcavities and photonic crystals. His wide-ranging success was recognised by the 2000 Institute of Physics Charles Vernon Boys Medal, and the prestigious 2004 Mott Lectureship.

Progress in photonic nanostructures recently led to his involvement in the successful spin-out from the University of Southampton of a new company, Mesophotonics Limited. He also chairs the Southampton NanoMaterials Forum and is director of the Southampton NanoMaterials Rapid Prototyping Facility, which was opened last February by Minister for Science and Innovation Lord Sainsbury.

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is to take up a Chair of Computer Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science. He will hold this position alongside his current appointments as Senior Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 'We are delighted that Tim Berners-Lee has accepted this appointment,' said Professor Wendy Hall, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. 'Many of the staff in the School have worked with him on the development of the World Wide Web over many years, and we are now closely involved with the evolution of the Semantic Web, which is Tim's vision for the future of the Web.’ 'Tim’s appointment is a fantastic boost to our work here in Southampton', said Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Director of the Advanced Knowledge Technologies Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, the UK’s largest Semantic Web project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. 'It also enables us to deepen our involvement with both US and European initiatives in this area.' The Semantic Web has been described by Tim Berners-Lee as 'an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in co-operation'. The Semantic Web provides a common framework which allows data to be shared and reused across applications, enterprises, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. With a background of system design in real-time communications and text processing software development, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. Since 1994 he has been based at MIT, directing the W3 Consortium, the standard-setting body which develops common protocols to realize the full potential of the Web. In 1999 he was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 20 scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century: 'From the thousands of interconnected threads of the Internet, he wove the World Wide Web and created a mass medium for the twenty-first century.' In 1996 the University of Southampton was the first university to award Tim Berners-Lee an honorary degree in recognition of his role in developing the World Wide Web. In 2003 he was awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work on global communications. ‘Through his vision in inventing and developing the Web and ensuring that it is freely available and accessible for all, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has transformed all aspects of our world,’ said Professor Bill Wakeham, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton. ‘I very much look forward to welcoming him to Southampton as a member of our School of Electronics and Computer Science, and to the significant and substantial collaborations that will follow as a result of his appointment.’

The future of personal identification technologies such as biometrically-based ID cards and their capabilities to meet current expectations will be addressed at a seminar on The Challenge of Biometrics being held next Tuesday (14 December) at the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in London.

Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on a physiological or behavioral characteristic. Among the features measured are: face, fingerprints, handwriting, iris, retinal, and walk. The seminar will address the spread of these technologies - from border control applications to national ID programmes - and address whether they are ready for what is expected of them.

Professor Mark Nixon of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton, one of the UK's earliest researchers in this field, will deliver a presentation entitled Advances in new biometrics. He will discuss some of the newer biometrics such as gait, recognition by ear and identification by tapping, and assess how each performs and contributes generally to advances in the field.

Professor Nixon's group is well known for its pioneering role in the development of new biometrics, from face recognition to, more recently, gait and ears as a biometric.

He comments: 'There has been constant innovation in the short history of biometrics and it is crucial for deployment and performance enhancement. For example, we started out by realizing that people could be recognised by their faces and then by the way that they walk. Now we are finding that we can break that down further into the exact components that provide most recognition; in our gait research we are finding that it's not always the parts that move that provide us with the most information.'

University of Southampton spin-out company Perpetuum Ltd has appointed technology business specialist Roy Freeland as its Chief Executive Officer. The company, which has been founded by academics at the University's world-class School of Electronics and Computer Science, harvests kinetic energy from the environment and puts it to use in a range of innovative ways. 'This is very exciting technology,' said Roy Freeland. 'Thanks to the work at the School, Perpetuum has the opportunity to become a market leader in providing self-sustaining power sources for sensor systems. Everyone I have spoken to is enthusiastic about its possibilities. It is environmentally friendly and has many applications in so many areas.' Roy has more than 20 years experience at senior level for leading companies in the international automotive, defence and aerospace markets. He has also recently been mentoring young companies at the University's Chilworth Science Park. 'In recent years there has been a significant change in the quality of support from the University in establishing new businesses, he commented. 'I have taken advantage of the incubation support offered by SETsquared, which gave us a terrific start. 'Being involved in a spin-out from the School of Electronics and Computer Science is very exciting, due to the quality of the research expertise on which the company can draw,' he added. Using cutting edge technologies, Perpetuum researchers have developed small, inexpensive wireless sensor systems with RF data transmission. The patented vibration harvesting microgenerator produces sufficient energy from relatively low levels of vibration to power the systems so they require no external power supplies or batteries. Among many potential applications, these could be used to monitor stress and find dangerous fractures by being embedded in structures such as bridges and aircraft, or monitor the health of rotating parts and moving vehicles. Future planned developments could lead to an everlasting heart pacemaker. Sensors in use at present are limited by the need for a power supply or batteries, but Perpetuum's version will capture its own energy from the environment. For example, a sensor on a railway track could reduce rail accidents by using vibration energy harvested from passing trains to report faults in the track or rolling stock over the mobile phone network. Work is under way to miniaturise the device to the size of a 5p coin. The company was formed by Professor Neil White together with ECS colleagues Steve Beeby, Nick Harris and John Tudor. Professor White said: 'The technology to power microsystems from the environment will have wide-ranging applications across many industries, where it will help to reduce maintenance and pollution from discarded batteries.' 'This technique has the potential to be world-beating in terms of power output,' said Roy Freeland.

Perpetuum has already received funding from specialist financiers IP2IPO and Sulis.

The University of Southampton is to make all its academic and scientific research output freely available.

A decision by the University to provide core funding for its Institutional Repository establishes it as a central part of its research infrastructure, marking a new era for Open Access to academic research in the UK. Until now, the databases used by universities to collect and disseminate their research output have been funded on an experimental basis by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee). The University of Southampton is the first in the UK to announce that it is transitioning its repository from the status of an experiment to an integral part of the research infrastructure of the institution.

‘This decision by the University marks a real milestone in the Open Access initiative,’ says Dr Leslie Carr. ‘At Southampton we have a significant headstart since we created the EPrints software that is used by many UK universities, but we expect and indeed hope that others will soon give similar status to their own archives.’ Dr Carr is Technical Director of the open source GNU EPrints software, which is now used by around 150 repositories worldwide. Southampton established its repository (http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/) in 2002 as part of the JISC TARDis project (Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure), to explore issues surrounding the Open Access paradigm. The repository provides a publications database with full text, multimedia and research data.

‘We see our Institutional Repository as a key tool for the stewardship of the University’s digital research assets,’ said Professor Paul Curran, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. ‘It will provide greater access to our research, as well as offering a valuable mechanism for reporting and recording it.

‘The University has been committed to Open Access for many years. The fact that we are now supporting it with core funding is another tangible step towards its full achievement.’

The Southampton repository will now become a service of the University Library in partnership with the University’s Information Systems Services and its School of Electronics and Computer Science (who host the JISC-funded software development team).

Acknowledging the success of the partnership between the Library, Information Systems Services and the Schools, the Librarian, Dr Mark Brown, said: ‘Collaboration between services and academic groups has been the key element in the success of the project. The Institutional Repository will now become an integral part of the electronic library service at Southampton.’

Professor Stevan Harnad, regarded by many as the founder of the Open Access movement, has been successfully leading the debate from the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science over a number of years, and has argued forcefully for its adoption by the academic community worldwide. The School of Electronics and Computer Science already has the most populated online institutional archive in the UK.