The ECS Communications group is part of an exciting new initiative which will increase joint research and research training between the UK and India.

The India-UK Virtual Graduate Research School (VGRS) will drive collaborative programmes in fundamental research, and support research training and technology transfer between the two countries. The VGRS is a major component of the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) of Excellence in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services, set up in 2007 as part of the UK-India Education and Research Initiative.

The IU-ATC comprises a consortium of 22 major India-UK industry and academic partners, led by the University of Ulster, IIT Madras, and BT. The Virtual Graduate Research School will support the mobility of collaborative PhD and postdoctoral projects and a programme of exchange visits within the consortium. Funding of over $3 million will provide opportunities for 23 PhD scholarships and 16 industrial internship positions between the consortium partners in both countries over the next four years.

The ECS Comms group is one of the academic partners, representing the University of Southampton, along with the universities of Ulster, Queen Mary College, London, Surrey, Bristol, UCL, IIT Madras, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore, which have provided additional financial support for PhD scholarships.

The project has also attracted financial support from key industry partners in both countries, including BT, InfoSys, Wipro and Sasken. BT's support is particularly significant as it provides full PhD scholarships and industrial internships for project partners.

The IU-ATC's UK academic lead, Professor Gerard Parr from the University of Ulster, said: ‘The IU-ATC has been set up to establish, for the first time, the support infrastructure and creative sponsorship opportunities that will enable successful collaboration between academic institutions, government and industry in Britain and India.

‘The long-term success of this large-scale initiative is dependent upon support received from key stakeholders, and we have had excellent engagement and support from BT, Indian organisations and the British and Indian governments. The funding we have received from the UKIERI-DST Award is very important as it provides our VGRS with the ability to function and provide real knowledge, mobility and research training for graduates to visit and work in both countries. It also provides us with a mandate to further develop our plans.’

Funding will be available to support PhD research training projects and exchange of consortium postgraduate and post-doctorate research scientists in areas of relevance to the IU-ATC work plan agenda. These include resilient communications infrastructures, embedded energy-aware low-cost devices, pervasive sensors, real-time network data analytics for fixed-wireless broadband, end-to-end network security protocols, cross layer protocols for real-time interoperability, smart antenna design for NG mobile wireless communications and advanced networked ICT services and systems.

‘We look forward to engaging the best intellectuals of the vast sub-continent of India in a mutually beneficial research endeavour’, said Professor Lajos Hanzo, who leads the initiative in ECS.

‘A million new mobile subscribers sign up in India every month and mobile communications is substantially contributing towards wealth-creation. We are preparing joint research proposals in the interest of augmenting our activities with the aid of further research funds.’

New ECS Professor Darren Bagnall manages an energetic research group within the Nano Group that is investigating new types of solar cell based on nanotechnology.

He is one of a number of staff in the School of Electronics and Computer Science who will be moving this month into the new Mountbatten Building, a £55M development for leading-edge research in nanotechnology and optoelectronics.

This is an incredibly exciting time for us’, he says. ‘Over the last few years there has been a massive increase in funding for research into renewable energy. Even with currently available technology photovoltaics will probably provide 50 per cent of the world’s energy in around 40 years time, but what we actually want is to use nanotechnology so that solar cells are efficient and reliable, and yet so cheap that they can be afforded by the tens of thousands of villages around the world that currently do not have electricity.’

Some of Darren’s most eye-catching work includes the use of nanostructures that copy the complex patterns that produce extreme colour effects on moth-eyes and butterfly wings. He is also exploring the use of metallic nanoparticles – plasmonics - that can help to trap light within thin semiconductor layers in a solar cell.

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IT Innovation, the School's off-campus applied research centre, are this week showcasing their groundbreaking work in digital content production at Europe’s largest film and television industry event, IBC in Amsterdam.

This vast annual exhibition attracts broadcasters, content creators, equipment manufacturers and support industries from around the world. IT Innovation are exhibiting in the New Technology Campus at IBC – the area of the show reserved for the very latest research and development work.

The four projects IT Innovation are presenting are the result of ongoing collaborations with major film and broadcast industry players including the BBC; Pinewood Group; leading equipment manufacturer Thomson Grass Valley; Digital TV Group, the industry association for digital television in the UK; and major Greek film producer Stefi Productions. The AVATAR-m project addresses the challenge the industry faces in storing and preserving huge quantities of born-digital content. The project embraces a new world where archives can be deployed either in-house or as third-party services. It bridges the gap between archiving as a long-term preservation activity and the day-to-day business of using archives as working asset repositories. IT Innovation are demonstrating a service-oriented approach to digital preservation using federated storage services.

MUPPITS is a radical post-production infrastructure that promises to revolutionise the way Soho trades computing resource. It will allow end-users, facilities houses and service providers to come together in a secure environment to plan, manage and combine their collective resources dynamically and flexibly, reducing costs and making the industry a little bit greener.

The ANSWER project is drawing inspiration from the world of dance to develop a novel approach to planning and coordinating film production. A symbolic notation for film production, akin to Labanotation in dance, will allow directors to script set configurations, camera actions and actors’ movements, and see their ideas rendered instantaneously as high-quality animated 3D storyboards.

Members of the SCOVIS team will also be on hand to explain how computer vision tracking techniques combined with automatic rule-based editing can create customised video sequences from multi-camera installations – the applications of this technology range from souvenir videos for tourists to interactive sports coverage.

In recent years IT Innovation has built a strong reputation in the film and broadcast industries, strengthened in 2006 by the appointment of Paul Walland, formerly Head of Collaborative Research at Hampshire-based broadcasting equipment manufacturer Snell and Wilcox.

IT Innovation’s Managing Director, Colin Upstill, explained the importance of IBC: ‘Modern digital media developments such as the explosion of user-created content, moves to High Definition and 3D production, and digital online storage and distribution already present huge IT challenges for the broadcast industry.

‘As the industry event in Europe, IBC is the best possible arena to present our current work to key decision makers, build new relationships, and hear at first-hand the emerging challenges that we must address in future collaborations.’ IBC 2008 runs from 12 to 16 September at the RAI exhibition centre, Amsterdam.

ECS undergraduate students will be able to specialize in two of the most exciting areas of emerging technology when courses in mobile and secure systems come on stream in October 2009.

Developed with input from ARM, BT, IBM, NXP, Oracle and Zarlink, the new courses in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering will prepare students for a wide range of careers across high-tech business and industry, and is fully accredited by the BCS and IET as the University stage of training to Chartered Engineering status.

The two new programmes take a broad view of mobile systems. The course encompasses handheld devices, mobile robots, telemedicine and mobile software agents. All are enabled by a mix of low-power, system on chip, power harvesting and wireless technologies.

The experience of secure systems in the courses is similarly broad, ranging over penetration testing of network servers, threats such as viruses, spyware and rootkits and consumer technologies, including RFID, Oyster, and chip and PIN. Coverage of both the underlying theory couple with hands-on experience will enable student to develop real expertise.

Further information about the courses is available on the Undergraduate courses section of our web site.

ECS 2008 graduate Sean Nuzum has been named UK Student of the Year in the Real-World Magazine Awards for his contribution to university life.

Sean graduated this summer with a 2.1 Master of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering. Throughout his four years at the University his organizational skills, energy and motivation have been enormously valued by the Students’ Union, the entrepreneurial society, Fish on Toast, and the School of Electronics and Computer Science. He has also been a keen member of the University’s JuJitsu squad, and has made a number of videos to promote student events.

At ECS he played a major role in the organization and running of the Electronics and Computer Science Society, of which he was President in 2005-6, organized the School’s JumpStart student induction event in 2007 and is running it again this year. He is currently designing a Careers Hub web site for the School’s students and planning an entrepreneurial career in which motivation of others will play a strong part.

Eric Cooke, Senior Tutor in ECS, said: ‘Sean has contributed a huge amount to the academic support that the School needs from its students and to the School’s social life which is also very important. The students in ECS have benefited enormously from his efforts.’

At this year’s Graduation ceremony in July Sean was awarded the Head of School prize for his contribution to ECS.

He is delighted with the prize of £500, which he says will be ploughed straight back into activities that will benefit students. ‘I’m going to work with the Entrepreneurs Club and we’ll use the money to generate more funds, which will be split between a donation to charity and funding for the company I plan to establish which will help students decide on their future careers.’

You can Sean's video entry for the awards on YouTube.

The ECS Scholarship and Benefits package for undergraduate students is outlined in a new brochure published for Open Day 2008.

The Scholarship and Benefits scheme at ECS is part of the School's determination to pass the additional income derived from tuition fees directly to our students to enhance the whole student experience. This benefits all students in the School and also provides strong incentives to encourage academic excellence.

Students who receive AAA in A levels will be eligible to receive a Zepler Scholarship of £1000 in their first year of study. Students who have taken qualifications alternative to A level will be eligible to receive Scholarships if they are in the top 10 per cent of students in each degree stream. These awards are subject to performance of above 70 per cent in the ECS Semester 1 exams. All these awards are open to all students in the School.

With similar awards in place in subsequent years, it is possible for an ECS student to receive funding of £4000 over the course of a four-year degree.

Other benefits include free books and equipment and careers opportunities.

Full details of the Scholarships and Benefits are on the Scholarships section of our web site.

Generous prizes also exist within degree streams. For example, the top students in Parts 2 and 3 (MEng) of the Computer Science degree stream receive top-of-the-range iPods sponsored by Netcraft, the leading Internet and security company, and this year Imagination Technologies gave Pure DAB radios to the winning team members in the Part 2 Software Design module.

Speaking in Washington last night (14 September), Sir Tim Berners-Lee unveiled an exciting new vision for the next phase of development of the World Wide Web …

…in which research, and the work of the Web Science Research Initiative, would play a central role.

Announcing the formation of the World Wide Web Foundation, to fulfil a vision of the Web as humanity connected by technology, Sir Tim said that the Foundation seeks to enable all people to share knowledge, access services, conduct commerce, participate in good governance, and communicate in creative ways. Crucial to achieving this will be technological innovation, research into the Web as a system, and the application of the Web for the benefit of underserved communities The Foundation will raise funds through a multi-faceted strategy, beginning with a $5 million seed grant over five years from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

‘The Web is a tremendous platform for innovation, but we face a number of challenges to making it more useful, in particular to people in underserved communities,’ said Sir Tim. ‘Through this new initiative, we hope to develop an international ecosystem that will help shape the future Web. A more inclusive Web will benefit us all.’

The World Wide Web Foundation is in the unique position of being able to improve the Web by bringing together existing communities, governments, NGOs, and other stakeholders who see the Web as a instrument of creativity, collaboration, and communication. The Web Foundation will pursue its objectives by funding projects around the world in three strategically integrated programs related to research, technology, and social development.

In outlining his expectations of the Foundation’s work, Sir Tim, a professor in ECS, emphasized the importance of Web Science as an area of study, involving multidisciplinary research into the analysis and engineering of the Web itself.

‘In 2006 I helped to set up the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) [a joint initiative between Southampton and MIT] to facilitate and produce the fundamental scientific advances necessary to inform the future design and use of the World Wide Web. We are now working with a growing number of colleagues around the world to develop the academic infrastructure for this new field.’

One aspect of this research will be to ensure that the future Web supports ‘the basic social values of trustiworthiness, privacy and respect for social boundaries that are so critical for connecting people.’ Other important areas of future work will involve mobile computing and eGovernment.

Calling for significant collaborative efforts worldwide Sir Tim said that the Web Foundation is in the unique position of being able to learn from the results of projects to accelerate the evolution of the Web. He concluded: ‘The Web is a platform like a piece of paper. It does not determine what you will do with it, it challenges your imagination.

‘Our success will be measured by how well we foster the creativity of our children. Whether future scientists have the tools to cure diseases. Whether people, in developed and developing economies alike, can distinguish reliable healthcare information from commercial chaff. Whether the next generation will build systems that support democracy, information the electorate, and promote accountable debate.’

Group Secretary Maggie Bond is the first member of ECS staff to be fully settled into her new office in the Mountbatten Building.

Maggie was in the advance party of key staff and researchers who are the first to move into the new Building, which has been planned since late 2005 and under construction since January 2007. 'I'm delighted to be here at last,' she said, 'and feel very settled.'

The £55M Mountbatten Building provides four floors of complex clean rooms, labs, offices and research space for the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the Optoelectronics Research Centre. Its facilities and equipment are state-of-the-art, and will provide new opportunities for the University's research in nanotechnology and photonics.

Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, paid tribute to all members of the School and to members of the University for the hard work that has gone into making the new Mountbatten Building such a successful reality. 'There have been many milestones in the construction process over the past few years,' he said, 'but this is the most meaningful. Now that staff are actually in the Building all our plans take on a new reality and we can begin to see a very exciting future.'

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi has received the 1st Publishing Achievement Award from the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Professor Al-Hashimi has edited IET Computers and Digital Techniques for the last five years, during which time it has gone from strength to strength. Professor Al-Hashimi relaunched the journal to reflect emerging and new trends in System-on-chip; low power embedded computing systems and CAD tools. As a result the submission rate has increased significantly and the journal is now recognized as one of the leading journals in the field.

The IET Award recognized Professor Al-Hashimi's 'vision, energy and technical expertise with awareness of the emerging topics'. His strong international standing in the research community and the world-leading work of the Electronic Systems and Devices group in ECS of which he is a member has grown confidence in the journal and encouraged its greater prominence.

'Of course I am delighted that I am the recipient of the 1st IET Publishing Achievement Award,' said Professor Al-Hashimi, 'and look forward to move the journal forward to establish it as the journal for choice for researchers worldwide to publish their new research results in the area of computer engineering.'

For the second year running an ECS dissertation on computerised agents has won the BCS Distinguished Dissertation Competition, indicating that agents are becoming a reality.

It is also the second year in a row that a researcher from the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has won this annual award, which is presented by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC), in conjunction with the British Computer Society (BCS).

This year's winner, Dr Talal Rahwan from ECS, has developed new algorithms to enable greater co-operation between agents.

He calls this interaction 'coalition formation' which allows autonomous agents to group and co-ordinate their activities efficiently so that they achieve their individual or collective goals.

‘Forming effective coalitions is a major research challenge in the field of multi-agent systems,’ said Dr Rahwan. ‘Central to this endeavour is the problem of determining which of the possible coalitions to form in order to achieve the goals of the system. Our algorithms significantly outperform previous ones in terms of execution time, solutions quality, and memory requirements.’

Last year's winner, Dr Rajdeep Dash also from ECS, examined the role of agents in the way auctions are used to manage supply chains.

Professor Nick Jennings, Head of the Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group at ECS, who supervised both dissertations, said: ‘The fact that dissertations on autonomous agent-based systems have won the British Computer Distinguished Dissertation Competition two years running is firm evidence that our agents are leaving the laboratory and are ready to be used in industry. We are now moving towards practical devices that support the effective co-ordination and formation of teams of first responders in major disaster response scenarios.’

An example of where agents are being developed for use in disaster management scenarios is the ALADDIN (Autonomous Learning Agents for Decentralised Data and Information Networks) project (http://www.aladdinproject.org/) which is now well under way and in which ECS is a partner.

The dissertation award selects the best British PhD/DPhil dissertations in computer science and publishes the winning dissertation and runner up submission on the BCS website. The prize winner will receive his award at the 2008 BCS Roger Needham Lecture, at the Royal Society in London, on 12th November.