The School was strongly represented at this year's Grace Hopper Celebration in Florida, by a contingent of 10 ECS researchers led by Professor Wendy Hall, last year's winner of the Anita Borg Technical Leadership Award.

The Grace Hopper Celebration is an annual event organized by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology , and designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. It is the world's largest annual gathering of technical women in computing.

The ECS contingent is pictured here: Left to right:  Kate Macarthur, Mair Allen-Williams, Reena Pau, Professor Wendy Hall, Claire Pass, Despina Zenonos, Valanto Kousetti, Ilaria Liccardi; sitting - Clare Hooper, Jane Morgan

Dr Kieron O'Hara, Senior Research Fellow in ECS, discussed new ways for Information Communication Technology (ICT) to bridge the digital divide, at a conference in Portugal on 30 October.

Dr O'Hara, who is based in the ECS Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia research group, presented a paper entitled Digital Divides and Web Science at the Lisbon Research and Policy Workshops on Science, Technology and Social Change, organised by the Portuguese Presidency of the European Union, which took place at the Portuguese Communications Foundation, Lisbon on 29-30 October.

In his talk, Dr O'Hara called for a better understanding of how ICTs can accelerate bridging the digital divide in the future. He argued that there is not one 'digital divide' but actually several divides, between young and old, rich and poor, trained and untrained, and so on.

Furthermore, much depends on what computers can, or should, be used for: communication, or personal use, or to play a full part in community life. He made this argument in a recent well-received book 'inequality.com'.

Dr O'Hara also suggested that Web Science, the study of the Web from several different angles, which is the main focus of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) a joint research collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an important part of the effort, combining as it does, science, social science and engineering.

ECS has experienced the largest increase in its Computer Science intake since the dot-com crash. Ninety-four new CS undergraduates joined the School - 20 per cent more than last year.

The intake is also 20 per cent more higher than in 2006. According to Dr Paul Garratt, Senior Admissions Tutor, Computer Science, this is very good news for the industry and signals a renewed interest in mathematics and physics and an endorsement of computer science as a route to extremely lucrative careers such as management consultancy, finance and IT.

‘Employment prospects for computer sciences graduates in Europe and the USA are better then ever, he said. ‘It is not unusual for a graduate to start out on £35,000 in what is now an extremely healthy job market.’

ECS graduates are employed by some of the world’s major IT employers such as Microsoft and Google and IBM.

The School’s popularity in computer science was highlighted earlier this year when students gave the highest rating in the UK to their courses (average 4.5 out of a possible 5), scoring aspects such as teaching, assessment and feedback, academic support, organisation and management, learning resources, personal development, and overall satisfaction.

According to Dr Garratt, the combination of electronics and computer science at ECS and the state-of-the art facilities under construction in the new Mountbatten Building are also factors which account for this year’s increase.

ECS welcomed a total of 270 undergraduates, 144 MSc students and 65 PhD students this academic year.

The topping-out of the Mountbatten Building took place under clear skies on Friday 2 November, marking the fact that the building has reached its highest point.

The £55M new building, a state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary facility designed specifically to meet the long-term research needs of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre, contains a large purpose-built clean room and associated laboratories, along with offices and meeting space.

The topping-out was carried out by Dame Valerie Strachan, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Southampton and Chair of Council, who was accompanied by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Bill Wakeham, David Amos of Bovis Lend Lease, Project Director of the new building's construction, and Graeme Forbes, Head of Bovis Lend Lease Technology. Also present were project managers White Young Green/Trench Farrow; and the design team headed up by IDC.CH2M Hill, with architects Jestico + Whiles and structural engineers Gifford.

Professor Wakeham reminded guests that it was exactly two years since he had addressed a joint meeting of staff and researchers in ECS and ORC the day after the fire which destroyed the previous building, when he pledged that the University would rebuild and that the new building would be better than what had existed before. David Amos said that the construction project had been a privilege to work on and he was excited about the next stage of the building's construction which would see some stunning results as some of the more visual aspects of the building's design were revealed.

Dame Valerie symbolically smoothed concrete into the final post on the building's roof and the building was toasted with champagne by the guests, who included representatives of the many contracting companies involved as well as members of the University, ECS and the ORC.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, last month signed off an order for £6.6 million worth of equipment for the building, which will facilitate more in-depth nanotechnology research. The most significant equipment is the Jeol JBX 9300 FS electron beam lithography system, which cost £3.3M. It is used to write very small patterns in resist, with an ultimate resolution below 10nm, making it a very important tool for top-down nanotechnology research.

‘Construction of the new building is continuing apace,’ said Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, 'but of course it’s the equipment inside it that will enable the research to be carried out under truly state-of-the-art conditions. This, coupled with our high-quality academics, students and support staff, will enable us to develop faster, smaller, lower-cost, lower power, more environmentally-friendly devices for the next generations of electronic products whilst continuing our pioneering work in computer science.’

ECS research fellow Dr Rajdeep Dash has won this year's Distinguished Dissertation Prize, awarded by the British Computer Society, for his PhD on computerised agent systems.

Dr Rajdeep Dash has been selected by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC), in conjunction with the British Computer Society (BCS), as the winner of the Distinguished Dissertation Competition 2007. He will receive his award at the 2007 BCS Roger Needham Lecture at the Royal Society in London on Tuesday 13 November. Although this competition has existed since 1990 this is the first time that a Southampton researcher has won the first prize.

Dr Dash’s dissertation entitled Distributed Mechanisms for Multi-Agent Systems: Analysis and Design uses techniques from game theory to design markets that allocate resources (such as energy and bandwidth) and control the flow of information in sensor networks.

‘There is an increasing need for computer systems that operate a decentralised control regime, and that contain a number of components representing distinct, agile stakeholders with different aims and objectives,’ said Dr Dash.

‘Within the systems I have developed, I have designed new auction protocols which could change the way auctions are used to manage supply chains by incorporating more information such as trustworthiness, capacity and information elucidated from competitors.’

Dr Dash’s PhD thesis was supervised by Professor Nick Jennings, Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia group in ECS, who said: ‘This thesis is an excellent example of what a PhD should look like. It has made foundational scientific contributions and shown how these can be used in practice for an important class of real-world problems.

‘The technical contribution lies at the intersection of economics (game theory) and computer science, which is one of the most exciting areas of research for the next generation of decentralized information.’

The annual dissertation award selects the best British PhD/DPhil dissertations in computer science. Over 20 submissions were received covering a wide range of research topics and after a rigorous review process involving international experts, the judging panel selected three dissertations that were regarded as exemplary, from which the winner was chosen.

Professor Roger Hubbold, Chair, CPHC/BCS Distinguished Dissertations Competition said of this year's competition: ‘The high standard of the dissertations is a testament to the excellence of computer science research in the UK- long may it continue!’

A research paper on system-on-chip test written by ECS researchers has been voted one of the most influential of the past 10 years.

DATE (Design Automation and Test Europe), one of the most prestigious conferences in electronics system level design and test in the world, is putting together a book featuring the work that has impacted most on its industry over the past 10 years, which will be published in March 2008.

The conference chairs have selected a paper entitled 'Improving Compression Ratio, Area Overhead, and Test Application Time for System-on-a-Chip Test Data Compression/Decompression' by ECS academics as one of the best papers in the year 2002.

The paper was written by two former PhD students in ECS, Theo Gonciari (2002), who is now at Lehman Brothers, and Nicola Nicolici (2000) who is now an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University, and co-authored by Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Professor of Computer Engineering at ECS.

Systems-on-Chip are key electronic components used in hand-held and portable devices, and the availability of low cost and effective manufacturing test technology is vital to keep the cost of such devices low. This paper proposed an efficient test solution that is based on using compression algorithms similar to that used successfully in compressing pictures and videos.

‘Low cost System-on-chip test solutions based on the use of compression have started to become mainstream technologies as many EDA (Electronic Design Automation) companies offer such solutions,’ said Professor Al-Hashimi. ‘This paper provides an excellent example of how academic research greatly influenced and shaped the format of how industry solves challenging problems in testing semiconductors chips.’

Rudy Lauwereins, DATE 07 General Chair added: ‘The aim of this DATE book is to highlight some of the most influential technical contributions from 10 years of the conference. Selecting 30 papers (only 10 papers from each year) has been a very challenging endeavour and, together with all 10 Programme Chairs, we have made a selection of the most influential papers covering the very broad range of topics which is characteristic of DATE.’

BBC Technology Online features a lively account by ECS academic Dr Peter Wilson of the surreal environment of manufacturing plants for silicon chips.

The process of making silicon chips is as complex as the chips themselves. Each manufacturing plant, or 'fab', may cost billions of dollars and is a triumph of engineering. But working inside these hi-tech plants can be a surreal experience, according to Dr Peter Wilson of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, whose account is featured by the BBC, as part of a new focus on The Computing Age.

Dr Wilson joined ECS in 2002, after a number of years working in the electronics industry.

The School of Electronics and Computer Science will next year be opening a new £55M interdisciplinary state-of-the-art clean room which will advance the Schools's research in electronics and nanotechnology.

An ECS academic presented new insights into the experiences of students with disabilities at a conference held in Colorado this month.

Mrs E A Draffan, of the ECS Learning Societies Lab, gave a keynote presentation entitled 'Assistive Technology in Higher Education' – UK Style at the 10th Annual Accessing Higher Ground:Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference on 8 November.

In her address, Mrs Draffan pointed out how technologically able many disabled students have become in the UK, as a result of which those facilitating learning have had to become more flexible in their approach to these technologies. She cited examples from her recent experience on the LexDis project, which explores the e-learning experiences of disabled learners within one institution - the University of Southampton.

She also looked at the legal, financial and study-skill support mechanisms available to graduate and postgraduate students with disabilities in the UK and discussed some of the developments in assistive technologies used by students, faculty and student services.

Mrs Draffan trained as a Speech and Language Therapist and worked in the field of communication difficulties before specialising in Dyslexia and Assistive Technology. She has since worked with disabled students in Further and Higher Education, set up an Assistive Technology Centre and worked with TechDis (a Joint Information Systems Committee funded initiative) on several projects.

A powerful new electromagnetic modelling tool has been developed with the help of ECS which could save companies time and money as they realise their design goals.

The latest release of the well-known electromagnetic simulation tool, Opera, was designed and created by Vector Fields in partnership with the University of Southampton.

Opera version 12 provides users with integrated design-simulate-optimise tools to create design models, simulate electromagnetic behaviour (and optionally related physics including temperature and mechanical stress), post-process results, and iterate the concept to reach the optimal solution.

Opera is available in numerous variants, with generic 2D and 3D finite element analysis (FEA) solvers for static and time-varying electromagnetic fields, and with application-specific solvers for design work involving rotating machinery, superconducting magnets, particle beams, dielectric insulation, and magnetisation/demagnetisation processes. The latest release extends the performance of many of these solvers to enhance simulation fidelity and speed.

‘This powerful tool was developed as a result of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University and Vector Fields,’ said Professor Jan Sykulski of the Electrical Power Engineering group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science.

"Opera's integrated design-simulate-optimise toolchain allows organisations to reach the optimal solution much faster - eliminating the huge cost associated with physical design iteration cycles,’ added Dr Kevin Ward at Vector Fields. ‘The incredible amount of intellectual property built into this toolsuite can cut months from the most challenging of projects.’

The 2008 edition of the School of Electronics and Computer Science calendar is now available from Zepler foyer and from UG computing lab.

Make sure you collect your copy of one of this year’s hottest Christmas presents! Featuring photographs of progress on the new Mountbatten Building, as well as a stunning shot of the School’s computer science base on University Road, the calendar also covers student life and events in the School, including the new Undergraduate Electrical Engineering Lab, the Individual Research Project, and Graduation. The School’s biggest news story of 2007, the VIBES microgenerator, is also featured, as well as the first appearance in Europe of the Artificial Life conference, being hosted by ECS in Winchester during August.

With dates of semesters and vacations highlighted, the ECS Calendar is a great gift to take home for Christmas!