The ECS programmes in Electronic, Electrical and Electromechanical Engineering were successfully reaccredited by the IET during a panel visit to the School this month.

The two-day visit to the School by the Institute of Engineering and Technology's accreditation panel was the final stage of a process that ensures that ECS programmes can fully satisfy the requirements leading to the professional Chartered Engineer status.

As well as thoroughly examining all aspects of the School’s education provision, including processes and quality assurance. The members of the panel also spoke to 25 students across the relevant programmes. The panel were impressed by the positive comments made by the students, and by the high quality and standard of student work, some of which they felt was very advanced.

The MEng programme was fully accredited as meeting the requirements towards Chartered Engineer status for 2008-2012 student intakes; the BEng and MSc programmes are accredited as partially meeting the requirements (the maximum that can be gained due to the nature of these programmes). The ECS contingent was led by Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Deputy Head of School (Education) and Dr Andy Gravell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, with support from members of the ECS academic staff.

'Professional accreditation and being able to successfuly satisfy the standards of the accrediting bodies are extremely important for our students,' said Dr Andy Gravell. 'When they go out into the world of work, they can be assured that their degrees meet the highest professional standards.'

The School will receive a visit from the British Computer Society next May (2009) for continued accreditation of programmes in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Technology in Organisations.

Professor Wendy Hall has been awarded a Guest Professorship at Tsinghua University in China, only the seventh UK academic to have received this honour.

Tsinghua Vice Provost Zhang Yi presided at the ceremony and presented the honorary appointment book to Professor Hall. After the ceremony, Professor Hall delivered a speech entitled 'Towards a Science of the Web'. Professor Sun Maosong, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and Professor Ma Hui, Associate Dean of the Tsinghua University Graduate School at Shenzhen, also attended the ceremony.

As a result of the collaboration with Professor Hall, Tsinghua and the University of Southampton have agreed to establish a Tsinghua-Southampton Web Science Laboratory at the Graduate School in Shenzhen.

First-year Computer Science student Carly Wilson won a Bronze Medal at the European Taekwondo Championships which took place in Poland earlier this month.

Carly won her medal in the 2nd Dan Patterns section, a significant achievement, given that the judgement of Patterns is particularly gruelling.

Carly will now concentrate on taking her exams, before beginning training for further competitions over the summer, as part of the Senior England team. Later in the summer she is also going to Spain for a four nations tournament involving Portugal, Spain, Germany and England, then spending time in training and competitions in readiness for the World Cup in Italy in October.

Taekwondo originated in Korea as a martial art and combat sport. Its popularity – it is now the most popular martial art in the world in terms of number of practitioners – has resulted in the sport developing in different ways. World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) is an Olympic sport which is sparring-based with full contact. International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), which is Carly’s sport, is a more traditional style, with semi-contact in matches.

As the end of the academic year approaches and exam season looms, ECS students are in the midst of project presentation days.

The Part II projects have all culminated this week, with possibly the most hotly contested event being the trial of robot vehicles that were designed and constructed in the Electrical/Electromechanical Engineering Design and Manufacture project.

This project aims to develop students’ skills in areas including project management, teamwork, time management and communication, through the design, build and test of a PIC-controlled autonomous vehicle which is able to perform to a predefined specification.

The seven vehicles were put through their paces in front of the whole class, and the course leaders, Dr Paul Lewin and Dr Paul Chappell, and there were nerve-racking moments as some of the vehicles proved temperamental on the course. The winning team, with a fabulous time of 19 seconds to complete the course and do all the manoeuvres, was Terri Brain, Jack Hunter, Tom Redman, Ben Strawbridge and Lewis Carpenter.

‘Looking around the room I saw students who had forgotten that this was coursework. For most of us this had ceased being about the marks – competition had taken over and our hearts raced too as our robots hurtled around the track towards the finish line, every second counting,’said student Jevan Bryant.

Project presentation days continue this week, culminating on 16 June the final-year MEng students in ECS will present their work for the Part IV Individual Research Project in a day-long conference.

Members of the winning group in this year's Software Design Project were each awarded a PURE digital radio by project sponsors Imagination Technologies.

The Software Design Group Project requires second-year Electronics students to produce a novel software application designed to run on an HP iPAQ. Working in teams over the second semester, the students have to produce an application which makes use of the built-in GPS, uses a database, has a clearly designed user interface, is coded in C sharp, and is designed for the Southampton area.

This year’s project was sponsored by Imagination Technologies and judged by members of the School’s research staff. On the final presentation day the students had to present and demonstrate their application to the rest of the class and the judges, including course leader Dr Mark Weal.

The sixteen teams of five students had come up with a wide range of applications, such as a device which charted a vehicle’s progress through a city’s congestion charge areas. A number of exercise applications were submitted as well as events planners and guides to the City. However, the winner was Treasure Quest, an interactive game which would be especially useful at the ECS Freshers JumpStart week. Team members were: Charles Adlington, Kent Cheung, Sze Mien Lee, David Reed, and Ross Thompson.

The whole class was congratulated by Imagination Technologies Marketing Manager Mike Hopkins for the commercial viability of their projects.

PODCAST:139

The endless fascination of hands, hand movement and functionality are the enduring research interest of Dr Cheryl Metcalf of the ECS Electronic Systems and Devices research group.

Cheryl's interest in hands developed from her PhD in which she studied dynamic hand movement.

'Up until recently, it has not been possible to study dynamic hand movements,' she says. 'Now, with improvements in 3D movement analysis systems, we have developed a model which makes it possible for the first time to assess true hand function and record it.'

Cheryl became fascinated by the possibility of measuring something as interesting as hand functions, particularly as the complexity of functional hand movements makes them historically very difficult to measure.

'The hand is how we interact with the world,' she said. 'It provides us with many of our communication skills, yet it tends to be overlooked in terms of health funding.'

Cheryl's research, carried out with other members of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and clinicians at local hospitals, is making real advances in the assessment and treatment of different impairments of the human hand.

Read more in our profile of Cheryl and her research.

Research led by Dr Jo Adams on silver ring splints carried out by an interdisciplinary group including ECS academic Dr Cheryl Metcalf has shown that they have significant value.

The research led by Dr Jo Adams of the School of Health Professions and Rehabilitations Sciences at the University of Soutahmpton, was undertaken by academics in the University's School of Health Professions and Rehabilitation Sciences and the School of Electronics and Computer Science in conjunction with Occupational Therapy at Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, found that silver ring splints are effective in controlling hyperextension deformity of finger joints, which is common in individuals with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

These silver ring splints are elegant rings, which have replaced bulky, plastic ones and are worn to give joints back their stability. They look much better than the plastic ones and are also stronger and more durable.

The findings were published in a paper, 'Three dimensional function motion analysis of silver ring splints in Rheumatoid Arthritis', and co-author Dr Jo Adams was awarded the Arthritis Research Campaign Silver Medal at the British Society of Rheumatology's annual meeting.

The research work was funded by a grant awarded by Wessex Medical Research. The research team consisted of Dr Cheryl Metcalf, an engineer at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science; Caroline Spicka studying for her MSc at the University, and Dr Jo Adams, Professional Lead for Occupational Therapy at the University, and a clinical occupational therapist from Royal Hampshire County Hospital.

According to the researchers, the team has worked efficiently together to ensure that the project has fulfilled its remit to carry out innovative scientific research that is applied directly to real issues and concerns that are affecting patients' daily lives. The project has been an excellent example of clinically applied academic research.

'This award demonstrates what can be done when people work across disciplines,' said Dr Metcalf. 'These silver ring splints have been commercially available in different parts of the world for a while. Men and women wear them and they look a lot nicer than the plastic alternatives currently available - which means people are more likely to wear them.'

An occupational therapist at Royal Hampshire County Hampshire added: 'In fact I saw two patients this week who really do appreciate these splints. One is ordering three more for her little finger and both thumbs after having seven silver splints for at least five years for her other fingers. Unfortunately, the other patient can't because her skin is too delicate, but both can see the benefit.'

An abstract of 'Three dimensional function motion analysis of silver ring splints in Rheumatoid Arthritis' is available.

The arc prize in rheumatology is presented annually by medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign to five healthcare professionals working with people with arthritis in the fields of physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing, podiatry and other related areas.

Winners receive £500 and a silver medal.

Professor Wendy Hall has been elected as President of the Association for Computing Machinery, the first person from outside North America to hold this position in the ACM’s prestigious 60-year history.

In an announcement made today (3 June) from the ACM’s headquarters in the United States, Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, said her goal as president is to help ACM reach its full potential by expanding international initiatives and increasing gender diversity in all aspects of computing.

The ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, with over 90,000 members around the world, representing business and the professions, education, and research and development.

As a Past-President of the British Computer Society (2003-2004), and a researcher with many international connections, Professor Hall expressed her commitment to guiding ACM toward more initiatives in India and China. She also indicated her interest in rethinking the society’s relationship with Europe, and exploring relevant opportunities in South America and other parts of the world.

Her current research includes applications of the Semantic Web and exploring the interface between the life sciences and the physical sciences. She is a Founding Director, along with Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Daniel J. Weitzner, of the Web Science Research Initiative, which was launched in 2006 as a long-term research collaboration between the University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Hall is a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology and a founding member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. An active member of the Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web (SIGWEB) as well as the Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM), she chaired WWW2006, the World Wide Web conference, which was co-sponsored by ACM. She previously served as ACM Vice-President.

She is currently Senior Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, where she is also a Fellow. Her other honours include Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, and the Anita Borg Award for Technical Leadership 2006 from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She was awarded a CBE in 2000.

Professor Hall is the first person from outside North America to serve as ACM President in the association’s 60-year history. A full list of election results for the ACM includes the new Vice-President Alain Chesnais and the new Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Ryder.

Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive of the EPSRC, visited ECS to see progress on the new Mountbatten Building which is due for completion next month.

Professor Delpy was leading an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) delegation to the University, to discuss areas of strategic importance for the future of the UK’s science and technology research.

As part of his visit he was able to tour the Mountbatten Building, a £55 million interdisciplinary clean room complex, which provides a purpose-built facility for the University’s research in nanoelectronics and photonics. The facilities in the Mountbatten Building and the research to be carried out there is central to key strategic areas of EPSRC funding programmes.

Professor Delpy was accompanied on his tour of the new Building by Professor Peter Ashburn (pictured right), Head of the Nano Group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, and Professor David Payne, Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

The Mountbatten Building will contain research labs and facilities for the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. It is due for completion on 15 July, but fitting-out of the building for research is likely to take another six months.

Southampton lost one of its temporary landmarks over the weekend as the huge tower crane on the Mountbatten construction site was dismantled.

The huge crane had been a feature of the Mountbatten site since last April. Its removal on Saturday (7 June) is another indication of the approaching completion of the building. It is scheduled to be handed over to the University in mid-July.

Staff from the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre will move into the new building in August and the fit-out of labs and clean rooms will begin at the same time.

The Mountbatten Building will provide a flexible interdisciplinary facility for a wide range of nano-and bio-nano technologies.