A partnership of UK universities which is working to ensure the UK's international leadership in e-Science has received £5.6 million in funding.

Software development teams at the Universities of Southampton, Edinburgh, and Manchester, are developing advanced tools and components to empower new research in a wide range of disciplines as part of the UK's e-Science Core Programme. Following on from awards to Edinburgh and Manchester in September 2005, Southampton has now received £5.6 million of funding to sustain the collaboration between the partners until 2010.

OMII-UK (the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute UK) makes Grid software --which is developed by the UK e-Science Programme and its international collaborators -- available and easy to use by e researchers in all disciplines.

Formed in October 2005 by bringing together internationally recognised e-Science expertise at the three institutions, OMII-UK provides a powerful source of well-engineered software and enables an integrated approach to the provision of higher-level and more advanced tools. The new funding enables OMII-UK to commission further development of open source e-Science software components within the community, and extends Southampton’s original funding to support OMII-UK until 2010.

‘The advanced software generated by the e-Science programme ultimately enables new research -- it lets users do things more easily, and enables some things that simply weren’t possible before,’ said Professor David De Roure, who is leading the new phase of the Southampton activity . ‘Our job is to support and sustain that software in partnership with its user community.’

OMII-UK is uniquely placed to offer an integrated set of well-engineered open source Grid middleware that incorporates a wide variety of tools and services. Today, these tools perform tasks such as job submission, data integration and semantically guided workflows using Web Services and Grid infrastructure. OMII-UK will develop more advanced tools to empower new research in a wide range of disciplines.

OMII-UK Operations are the responsibility of Director Dr Steven Newhouse, who commented: ‘We have established a robust software engineering process that integrates software from our collaborators into a distribution that is easy to install, and I am delighted to enter this exciting new phase with its focus on new users and new collaborations.’

OMII UK provides a significant basis for international collaborations and standards. Alongside the UK-centred operation, OMII-China and OMII-Europe are also driving forward the OMII concept on the international stage.

Southampton's globe-trotting 'archivangelist' Professor Stevan Harnad, is currently promoting the benefits of University Open Access Self-Archiving as invited keynote speaker in Europe, the United States and Canada.

'Self-Archiving' means researchers depositing their published articles in their own university's open-access web archives, making them accessible for free, for all users worldwide.

Professor Harnad, one of the founders of the international Open Access movement and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is informing his audiences in five locations around the world that so far only 15 per cent of researchers are self-archiving spontaneously, even though studies from the University of Southampton have shown that self-archiving increases research usage and impact by a dramatic 25-250 per cent in all disciplines. This is especially important for the UK Research Assessment Exercise, he says, given the recently announced proposals that it will in future be based on metrics.

Yet 95 per cent of researchers report that they would comply if self-archiving were mandated by their institution or research funder (just as publishing is mandated) - and the four institutions that have so far mandated it (including Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, the first to do so) have demonstrated sky-rocketing self-archiving rates.

Of scientific journals worldwide, 93 per cent already officially endorse some form of author self-archiving. There is now a simple way that immediate deposit can be mandated even for articles published in the remaining seven per cent of journals that embargo, delay, or disallow author Open Access self-archiving.

This week the University of Southampton added a new 'User email eprint Request' feature to its free open access software, GNU EPrints, to encourage authors who are still hesitant about self-archiving to go ahead and deposit all their articles now, with no delay or embargo, by giving users the extra option of automatically (with just a few extra keystrokes) emailing the author to request an email copy whenever an article has been deposited but not yet made Open Access.

Professor Harnad commented: 'For those (like the RCUK, the European Commission, and the US National Institutes of Health) that have been hesitating about mandating immediate self-archiving because of concerns about the seven per cent of journals with copyright restrictions or delays/embargoes, immediate deposit can now be mandated without mandating immediate Open Access! This will fill the 85 per cent self-archiving gap and tide over the 7 per cent with almost-immediate email access. Research is not funded and conducted to have its usage and impact delayed or embargoed. In fast-moving fields especially, early uptake is critically important for research progress.'

Professor Harnad has presented/is presenting at the following five conferences:

Invited Plenary lecture, 1st European Conference on Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine and Medicine (ECSP) "Researchers and Open Access - the new scientific publishing environment" and also Workshop on "Self-archiving, Institutional Repositories, and its impact on research" Lund, Sweden 21- 22 April 2006 http://www.ecspbiomed.net

The Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K) Yale Law School, New Haven, 21-23 April 2006 http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/a2k.html

Invited Keynote. Open Access and Information Management: An International Workshop Organized by the Information Management Committee of Research & Technology Organisation of NATO, Oslo, Norway, May 10, 2006 http://www.rto.nato.int/Detail.asp?ID=1692

Invited Keynote. CRIS2006. Open Access Institutional Repositories. Current Research Information Systems. Bergen, Norway, 11-13 May 2006 http://ct.eurocris.org/CRIS2006/

Congrès de l'ACFAS 2006: Colloque sur l'autoarchivage des articles de recherche, leurs libres accès et leurs impacts scientifiques, McGill, Montréal, 15 mai 2006 http://www.acfas.ca/

An award made this month to the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) will help shape the future of e-Science.

ECS has yet again shown its leadership in the area of middleware engineering with the award of a €4.8 million European Union contract to establish the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for Europe (OMII-Europe). This award follows the recent success of ECS in securing an additional £5.6 million for the national Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute-UK (OMII-UK).

The OMII-Europe award is of particular significance as the University of Southampton is the co-ordinating partner within a 16-partner project involving the major European, American and Chinese institutes involved in Grid middleware development.

‘This project is also regarded within the European Union as a core infrastructure project that will shape the way e-Science is done within Europe for years to come,’ said Professor Peter Henderson, who is leading this activity.

OMII-Europe will provide key software components for building e-Infrastructures within the European Research Area (ERA). The initial focus for OMII-Europe is to facilitate the development and porting of a common set of application level services to a number of major Grid software distributions, and to develop tighter interoperability between those distributions.

Dr Alistair Dunlop, who has been instrumental in forging this collaboration, commented: ‘By bringing together many of the major Grid software providers to harmonize their efforts we will achieve Grid software that is more accessible and easier to use by application scientists.

‘This is a major international initiative that will play a significant part in the overall global effort to take forward the state of the art in Grid technology.’

A grant awarded this month will use e-Science and Grid technology to keep Europe at the forefront of nano-electronics.

The University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) is one of the partners in a £5.3M ($9.1M) project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in collaboration with leading design houses, chip manufacturers and Electronics Computer Aided Design (ECAD) vendors.

The project, which brings together leading semiconductor device, circuit and system experts from academia and industry and e-Scientists with strong grid expertise, will address some of the major challenges facing Nano-CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) design, the discipline which provides silicon chips and transistors which power devices such as computers and mobile phones.

Nano-CMOS design concentrates on the development of ever smaller silicon chips requiring less power and using only one transistor. In order to make the development of such chips a reality, strong links must be established between circuit design, system design and fundamental device technology to allow circuits and systems to accommodate the individual behaviour of every transistor on a chip.

Adjusting for new device architectures and device variability will add significant complexity to the design process, requiring the orchestration of a broad spectrum of design tools by geographically distributed teams of device experts, circuit and system designers.

‘The fundamental challenges that the semiconductor industry faces, at both technology and device level, will affect the design of future integrated circuits and systems,’ said ECS Professor Mark Zwolinski. ‘The increasing device variability demands revolutionary changes in the way that future integrated circuits and systems are designed and by working together we can achieve this, but only by embedding e-Science technology and know-how across the whole nano-CMOS electronics design process and revolutionising the way in which these disparate groups currently work.’

The other University partners in this project include Glasgow, Manchester, York and Edinburgh.

The e-Science and Grid technology will be provided by the National e-Science Centre run jointly by Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities and the e-Science North-West Centre at Manchester University.

The industrial partners include ARM and Wolfson Microelectronics (two of the largest UK fabless chip design companies), Synopsys (the world leader in design software) and Freescale, National Semiconductors and Fujtsu (leading semiconductor chip manufacturers). The project also received the support of the National Microelectronics Institute, the Trade Association for UK microelectronics

Teams from ECS carried off two major awards at AAMAS 06, the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, held this month in Hakodate, Japan. In a major coup, the IAM team won the first Agent Reputation and Trust (ART) competition, which was launched with the goal of establishing a testbed for agent reputation- and trust-related technologies. In the competition, 17 teams of agent researchers from universities around the world pitted their agents against each other, enabling them also to test whether their ideas about trust can feed into a generic problem. The game involved clients requesting appraisals for paintings from different eras; and the success of the appraising agents was judged on the highest number of clients and profit received for producing the most accurate appraisals. The winning appraiser agent (the Southampton agent, IAM), was the one with the highest bank account balance. Previous trust models developed in the School, such as TRAVOS (Luke Teacy and Jigar Patel) and FIRE (Trung Dong Huynh) helped contribute to the Southampton success: ‘We tried to keep our strategy as simple as possible, while making maximum use of the aspects of the game we knew most about,’ said Luke Teacy. The members of the Southampton team were: Professor Nick Jennings,Professor Michael Luck, Trung Dong Huynh, Jigar Patel, Luke Teacy, and Rajdeep Dash. The second Southampton success at the conference was the Darpa Award for Best Applied and Industrial Paper at the conference, which went to the AgentLink team, made up largely of Southampton researchers, for work on industrial case studies of deployed agent systems. The EU-funded AgentLink programme has been led from Southampton for the last five years, promoting agent technologies and their use in business, industry, and public life. Summaries of different applications of agent-based computing, and the lessons that can be learned from them, were described in the winning paper. By providing persuasive examples of deployed systems, the authors aimed to stimulate further industrial applications and to encourage industrially-relevant research. The members of the AgentLink team were: Dr Roxana Belecheanu, Dr Steve Munroe, Professor Michael Luck, Terry Payne (Southampton), Tim Miller, Peter McBurney (Liverpool University), Dr Michal Pechoucek (Czech Technical University).

WWW2006 took place from 22 to 26 May at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre; the conference was making its debut in the UK. Around 1250 delegates attended, and in a major break from tradition this year the academic conference programme was overlaid by a programme of keynote speakers from digital and web-based industries. The conference chair was Professor Wendy Hall, and co-chairs were Dr Les Carr and Professor Dave De Roure. Many staff in the School have been heavily involved in the organization of the event over the last 18 months.

A major draw at the event was the presence of Professor Tim Berners-Lee, who holds a chair in ECS, and who, along with other members of the School, was prominent in the UK and international media throughout the week. The conference focused on issues which are crucial for the development of the Web, including the mobile web and Semantic Web. Coverage for the themes discussed at the conference included items on BBC News, Sky News, UK and international press, and professional and trade periodicals.

Professor Wendy Hall, Head of School, who successfully brought the conference to the UK for the first time, said: ‘This was the 15th conference in the series and it will be one of the most significant. Not only because it took place in the UK for the first time, but because the World Wide Web is at a crucial stage of its development, and this conference will play a major role in getting that message out to the wider communities of business and users worldwide.’

As part of an unprecedented investment in research and education, the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) will this year award 40 new PhD studentships.

According to Professor Nick Jennings, Deputy Head of School (Research) and Professor of Computer Science, this investment is much more than any other School in the UK will have funded.

‘This is substantially more than we have ever funded in the past,’ he said. ‘Typically, we would fund maybe 10, but this year we will fund four times more and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will fund its usual 10.’

The Mountbatten Studentships, to be awarded from October for a three-year period, are part of a substantial strategic investment in research by ECS, and are primarily geared towards groups within the School which were affected by the devastating fire which engulfed the Mountbatten Building in October 2005. ‘We want to ensure that we recover from the fire even stronger than we were before,’ said Professor Jennings.

‘We have an incredible opportunity to move forward now with new plans and exciting new endeavours. The Mountbatten Studentships are a key part of that investment. But we also hope to be able to guarantee the Studentships for years to come through endowments, which will ensure a continued flow of talented and committed students into these key research areas.’

The new Studentships will have a strong emphasis on electronics and will focus on key growth areas such as nanotechnology and systems design.

‘These awards will revitalise and re-energise our approach,’ said Professor Jennings. ‘They demonstrate that we are now up and running again and seriously investing in our future.’

Notes for editors

1. With the gracious permission of The Countess Mountbatten, the Studentships are named in honour of Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who was a former President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and whose Broadlands Archive of private papers has formed part of the Special Collection in the University of Southampton Library for many years.

2. With around 480 researchers, and 900 undergraduate students, the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton is one of the world's largest and most successful integrated research groupings, covering Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electronics, and Electrical Engineering. ECS has unrivalled depth and breadth of expertise in world-leading research, new developments and their applications.

3. The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for research and scholarship. One of the UK’s top 10 research universities, it offers first-rate opportunities and facilities for study and research across a wide range of subjects in humanities, health, science and engineering, and has a strong enterprise agenda. The University has nearly 20,000 students and 5000 staff based across its campuses in Southampton and Winchester. Its annual turnover is in the region of £287 million.

The University is one of the country’s top institutions for engineering, computer science and medicine. It is home to a range of world-leading research centres, including the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the Centre for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, and the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies.

For information on how to apply for a PhD in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, please go to:

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/admissions/pg/ Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Tel: 023 8059 5453, email:j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Technology which will provide greater access to learning for students with disabilities will be unveiled at Southampton this week.

Researchers from all over the world will gather at the first Liberated Learning Consortium meeting to be held outside North America, at the group’s annual meeting, co-hosted by the University of Southampton and IBM Hursley, to review progress and new developments in speech recognition technology worldwide. The meeting will be held at IBM Hursley on Thursday 29 June and at the University on Saturday 1 July.

A number of new technologies in this field will also be showcased at a public symposium at IBM Hursley on Friday 30 June.

An individual display system that will allow learners to personalise text transcription will be unveiled by Dr Mike Wald, a member of the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS). He will also demonstrate a real time editing prototype that intercepts recognition errors as they occur.

Dr Wald is one of the founding members of the Liberated Learning Consortium which was set up seven years ago to develop ways of using speech recognition to automatically transcribe speech and display it as readable text.

‘This all began with a conversation with Dr Sara Basson from IBM Research about how speech recognition could change the future of classroom accessibility for people with disabilities,’ commented Dr Wald.

‘I knew at the time that speech recognition had the potential to transform access to learning and communication and my collaboration with IBM and the Liberated Learning Consortium has helped turn that vision into a reality.’

At the symposium, IBM scientists will present their work on the development of ViaScribe, the core technology that supports Liberated Learning research. Partners from Hiroshima University will share their experiences about the Japanese education system. Another contingent will talk about the technology’s impact on learning and their efforts to streamline the technical elements in Australia.

Other featured presentations include how the technology is being used in museums and in high school classrooms in Canada, how subtitling for broadcasting is being done using IBM Speech technology, and how wearable computers and head-mounted displays can be used in classrooms.

The Director of IBM’s European Accessibility Center and event sponsor, Julien Ghez, has been instrumental in introducing Liberated Learning into Europe.

He commented: ‘As a founding member of the Liberated Learning Consortium, IBM believes that innovation in this area will lead to great advancements in accessibility on a global scale. Any institution that faces challenges providing access to information for its stakeholders should watch these proceedings closely.’

Ends

Notes for editors 1. For further information about the Liberated Learning Consortium, please visit: http://www.liberatedlearning.com/about/index.html.

For further information, please contact:

Dr Mike Wald, Tel: 023 8059 3667, Email: mw@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Tel: 023 8059 5453, email:j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) has been made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

The election was made in recognition of Professor Shadbolt’s contribution to engineering. A Chartered Engineer, Psychologist, President-elect of the British Computer Society (BCS) and Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at ECS, he has engineered systems with practical applications which cross disciplinary boundaries.

Professor Shadbolt is one of 29 individuals elected to join the Academy Fellowship this year along with two International Fellows and three Honorary Fellows, including Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government and Jonathan Ive, Vice President of industrial design at Apple.

‘It is a real thrill for me to have the relevance of my work recognised in this way’, he said. ‘Engineering is everywhere, it’s pervasive and the Royal Academy of Engineering reflects this with Fellows elected from range of disciplines.’

A current example of Professor Shadbolt’s work is the Semantic Web which can be applied to information management challenges in for example the medical, defence and manufacturing industries.

‘The World Wide Web is an example of an exquisitely-engineered system at many levels, one which is constantly presenting new challenges and opportunities’, he said.

Professor Shadbolt has carried out research in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science since 1978 and has sought to develop programmes of research across traditional boundaries. His research concentrates on two ends of the spectrum of AI – namely, Knowledge technologies with practical applications and Biorobotics which draws on real animal systems for inspiration.

He has an international reputation for work in Knowledge Technologies and is the Director of an £8 million, six-year research programme (www.aktors.org) that is pursuing basic and applied research in the provision of technologies to support Knowledge Management and realise the promise of the Semantic Web.

‘Engineering is constantly developing’, he said. ‘As we use our hard won knowledge to construct more complex systems and structures, we require new ways to analyse, understand and improve them. Engineering, science and technology have literally built our world and will create our future.’

A Full List of new Fellows elected this year can be found at www.raeng.org.uk

Ends

Notes for editors

1. For further information about Professor Shadbolt and his work, please visit: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~nrs/

For further information, please contact:

Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton (tel.023 8059 5453; email jkl2@ecs.soton.ac.uk)

Professor Nixon's research on gait analysis was featured on ABC News Good Morning America on Thursday 13 July. Further coverage on Sky News is available, along with the Good Morning America video clip, on the School's In the News web site. Further information about research in gait analysis (a biometric of the way people walk), can be found on the web site of the Information: Signals, Images and Systems research group.