A community-based wireless network developed by a group of ECS students is providing wireless Internet access to Southampton residents.

The Southampton Open Wireless Project (SOWN) is a community and research project led by students and staff in the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). SOWN is investigating the technologies and infrastructure needed to deploy effective city-wide WiFi network coverage in a domestic area(currently Portswood, Highfield, and beyond) using hot-spots placed strategically to link up to a full-scale network.

In order to create the network SOWN has deployed wireless nodes in student houses around the Highfield Campus. Whilst sharing student’s bandwidth in each house, there is enough left over to allow other people to access the network and therefore the Internet.

‘Relying on community involvement has allowed SOWN to deploy its network in hard to reach places, as well as giving internet access to large swathes of student areas around the city,’ said ECS student Stuart Harland.

Members of the public can gain access to the wireless network by obtaining an account from SOWN (through the SOWN website) for which there is no charge. In addition to providing a high level of uptime and capability for its users in Southampton, SOWN is a test bed for new technology. The SOWN team are currently working on research on several key areas of wireless technology, including the development of multicasting audio and video streams, 802.1x Authentication, Transparent Mobility, Wireless VoIP, Wireless Location Tracking and deploying IPv6.

According to David Tarrant, SOWN team member and an ECS postgraduate student, SOWN is unique in that it is the only "non commercial, research network, student led, wide scale wireless network" around.

Since it began several years ago, SOWN has amassed a large amount of information on testing wireless devices, implementation of hardware and software solutions, and a whole volume of technical knowledge.

ECS researcher Mischa Tuffield is building an electronic log of everything he does, as part of the Memories for Life project co-ordinated in the School.

In a long article in the Daily Telegraph, Mischa explains that he archives all the data he gathers, both personally and from the Web, into a searchable format.

Dr Kieron O’Hara, a Senior Research Fellow in ECS, is quoted as saying: ‘Why should I bother to remember a boring work conversation when I could record it, have it automatically annotated and render it searchable with clever language recognition technologies?’And Professor Wendy Hall suggests that in future people will have wearable ‘memory aids’.

The Memories for Life project (M4L) brings together psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists and computer scientists will lead to a more effective use and management of both the human and computerised memory. It will place the technology in the context. M4L aims to produce an understanding of what is common in memory systems and use that knowledge to improve efficiency, recall and information management across human, personal, social and work domains.

The ECS student branch of the IEEE has won the 'best web site' for the second year running beating 38 other contenders across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The branch (which is funded by both the IEEE and ECS) is one of the most active branches in the UK, and last year received an award for the fastest growing branch in its region.

It has had a very successful year since then with an active programme of speakers, attracting large audiences to each event.

The web site now goes forward to the international competition, competing against the rest of the world.

The IEEE (Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) is one of the world's leading professional organizations, supporting education and the professions.

Gaming is already pointing the way towards learning technologies of the future, according to ECS Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

In a futuristic report on learning technologies published today (17 June) by the Ufi, it is predicted that in the future we will all have all have digital personal assistants, learning will take place on the move, and palm held, and artificial intelligence and machines will have a greater influence in training.

The technology is all there already, led by the world of gaming, according to Professor Nigel Shadbolt. ‘A Holy Grail will be to convert the energy and time devoted to immersive virtual environments (Second Life) and Massive Multiplayer Games (Word of Warcraft) into learning environments and outcomes,’ he says.

The report, entitled 'Skills Evolution: A vision of the future of workplace skills', will be launched at the British Museum in London, with a keynote address by one of the report’s authors, Professor Lord Robert Winston.

The report was commissioned by Ufi, which provides skills and learning through technology, and brought together world-renowned futurologists and scientists, including Professor Shadbolt and Professor Wendy Hall of ECS, to predict the impact of emerging technologies on the way people learn, and the effect this will have on society and the workplace by 2020.

ECS has been placed 2nd in the UK for Electrical and Electronic Engineering and 5th for Computer Science in the Times Good University Guide 2009.

In a table which remains broadly the same as last year, ECS has retained its position for both Electrical & Electronic Engineering and for Computer Science.

The Times ranking is calculated on the following factors: Student Satisfaction (NSS); Research Quality; Entry Standards; Staff-Student Ratio; Services and Facilities Spending; Completion; Percentage of Good Honours Degrees Awarded; and Employment Prospects.

The University of Southampton was placed 16th in the UK. You can read the Times's official profile of the University, as well as a student profile.

Sixteen ECS Researchers and PhD students raised £700 for Action against Hunger by taking part in the WADAC & AAIR 10K race in Winchester.

Despite the heat on the day and painfully steep hills of Winchester, everyone in the group finished the race and most of them completed it in less than an hour. Manuel Salvadores came in first from the group at an impressive 39 minutes.

The group, comprising a few seasoned runners and many new runners, trained since February for their race (led by Jenny Sorge and Noura Abbas). Everyone completed the run in about an hour and some even had enough energy to dash towards the finish line. Jenny Sorge, Noura Abbas and Nishadi De Silva won the Women's Business Team category.

The fundraising page for Action against Hunger is still available and all donations will be gratefully received. Action against Hunger works in over 40 countries to combat malnutrition and improve access to clean drinking water. All contributions, big and small, count; as little as £5, for instance, can feed 30 children in Malawi. In addition to the online fundraising page, the running team also organised a free cake stall in ECS to raise awareness about the run and the charity.

The ECS team members were: Jennifer Sorge, Noura Abbas, Ana Graca, Nishadi De Silva, Paulo Matos, Bene Rodriguez, Ross Horne, Manuel Salvadores, Rikki Prince, Dirk De Jager, Antonio Morgado, Ida Griffith, Luke Teacy, Ruben Stranders, and Yangang Wang. So, ECS has now truly caught the running bug and even more runners are signing up for the New Forest Half Marathon (September) wanting to run better and faster than before! Other races and relays in the South are also being looked at. ,Who says that computer scientists are geeks that never look away from their computer screens? We think not!', they say!

ECS 2008 graduates received their degree results on Friday 20 June, the culmination of their BSc, BEng, or MEng programmes in the School.

Two hundred final-year students waited anxiously on Friday morning for the final degree results to be posted up in the School's Zepler Building. The students had taken either the three-year BSc or BEng programmes in ECS, or the four-year MEng programme, on one of the School's 23 different undergraduate programmes.

A range of emotions were visible with celebrations beginning almost immediately. The students will receive their degrees at graduation ceremonies on Friday 18 July. 'It is a significant achievement to have successfully completed an undergraduate degree in ECS,' said Head of School Professor Harvey Rutt. 'We are delighted to be able to congratulate our students on the result all the hard work that has gone into their studies here and look forward to seeing them and their families at the graduation ceremonies.'

One final-year MEng student, Sean Nuzum has enjoyed his time at Southampton so much that he's made a video about it. Sean has used his time as a student to the full, running the ECS student society, taking part in the University entrepreneurs society, Fish on Toast, and also making videos for the Students' Union. His contribution to the University is recorded here, and if you'd like to vote for him in the Real World Awards and vote by Monday 30 June.

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Final-year MEng students presented the results of their Individual Research Project to a School conference, just days before their results were announced.

The Individual Research Project forms a substantial part of the final-year of the Master of Engineering degree. Students spend time researching a subject of their choice before writing a report and producing a poster which they present at a one-day conference in the School, their final task as an ECS undergraduate student. This course unit allows students to demonstrate mastery of an advanced aspect of the discipline, including critical evaluation of current research and research methods, and an awareness of the current limits of knowledge in this aspect of the discipline.

As well as producing a research report, the students also have to give a three-minute presentation of their report to their colleagues and to the examiners, as well as producing a poster. The conference was followed by lunch and the chance to look at the posters, as well as a very well-earned glass of champagne at the end of the final degree exams.

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It was announced by the University last week (18 June) that Darren Bagnall and Michael Kraft have been awarded Professorships in the School of Electronics and Computer Science.

Both Professor Bagnall and Professor Kraft are members of the ECS Nano Group and will be moving with their research teams into the new Mountbatten Building when it opens later this year. Both are looking forward to the new opportunities that the Building will bring.

Darren Bagnall said: ‘The new cleanroom will contain such a fantastic array of equipment that it will be amongst the very best nanofabrication facilities in the world. We will be able to deposit single layers of atoms and will have lithographic capability that will allow us to fabricate truly nanoscale devices and systems. Our capability in microscopy alone will be staggering, we will have scanning electron microscopes, atomic force microscopes and even a scanning helium ion microscope that will collectively allow us to visualise, understand and manipulate nanotechnology to create new electronic devices.

‘In my own research I am particularly excited about how the new cleanroom will allow us to investigate the use of nanotechnology as a route to cheap solar energy. We will use biomimetic surfaces, plasmonics and self-organised semiconductor nanowires to make entirely new types of solar cell. By growing solar cells like nanoscale forests we will be able to make solar energy so cheap that we will one day be amazed that people used coal, oil and uranium to make electricity.’

Michael Kraft said: ‘The new fab will allow me to develop and fabricate the most advanced micro and nanosystems, integrating sensors, actuators and interface electronics. We will be exploring new designs, materials and visionary ideas to make Atom Chips portable and transport them from lab curiosities to real-world applications.

‘We’ll work on levitating micro and nano-objects for inertial sensing applications, linear particle accelerators (aka MEMS guns) and RF applications. They all need sophisticated control and interface electronics to integrate them as a tightly integrated system on chip and the new building is going to give us a range of advantages as we take forward this exciting research.’

An ECS researcher has been awarded funding of £300,000 to improve the safety and usability of automatically generated software code commonly used in the space and automotive industries.

Dr Bernd Fischer of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop systematic techniques and supporting tools that will allow application developers to customise automatically generated code efficiently and reliably without needing to modify either the code generator or the generated code.

According to Dr Fischer, who has spent much of his career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which is one of the collaborators on this project, software developers generally rely on code generation as a key technology to translate high-level models into code. Although this speeds up development and increases productivity and reliability, the output code often differs from the user's exact requirements and thus needs customisation.

Over a three-year period, Dr Fischer proposes to develop a domain-specific code generator with the capacity to support reliable code customisation.

'This research is about making changes to the output of code generators,' said Dr Fischer. 'It's about making the code generator more flexible without having to go into the inner guts of the machine. Users in safety-critical application domains such as automotive and avionics systems will particularly benefit from the assurance support we can provide for customisations.'