The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory at the University of Southampton will be playing a key role in the new £4.7M HubNet project which begins this week.

HubNet, which is funded by the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), aims to develop the research agenda that will overcome the problems of improving efficiency and maintaining the reliability of the UK energy supply. In addition to funding from this important programme, the Tony Davies HV Lab has also secured funding from the National HE Stem Programme to develop resources for graduate skills development within the energy industry.

Professor Paul Lewin and Professor Steve Swingler will be leading the activity of the new Hub at Southampton, which also relates to ongoing research in the Tony Davies Lab, part of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. "We will be considering how new materials - such as nano-composite insulation and ceramic composites - can be used to design power equipment that is more efficient and compact," says Professor Lewin. "In addition, the management of transition assets will be considered: while a significant amount of new network equipment will need to be installed in the coming decades, this new construction is dwarfed by the existing asset base. It is thus essential to study how the life of existing equipment can be extended under what is likely to be far more extreme conditions."

The new research is taking place against the issues posed by the decarbonisation of the UK economy while at the same time maintaining the security and reliability of the energy supply. "This will require a profound transformation of the networks used to transport energy into and within the country," says Professor Lewin. "While the need is clear, the final shape of these networks is not, and getting there requires a considerable amount of research."

The creation of the “Hubâ€? will catalyse and focus the research on energy networks in the UK. In particular, this Hub will provide research leadership through the publication of in-depth position papers written by leaders in the field and the organisation of workshops and other mechanisms for the exchange of ideas between researchers, industry and the public sector. It will also spur the development of innovative solutions by sponsoring speculative research in new areas.

Academics at Imperial College London and the Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester, Nottingham, Southampton, Strathclyde and Warwick are the contributing partners to HubNet. Other areas for consideration within the project include: The design of smart grids, in particular the application of communication technologies to the operation of electricity systems and the harnessing of the demand-side for the control and optimisation of the power system; the development of a mega-grid that will link the UK’s energy network to renewable energy sources situated off shore, across Europe and beyond; the development of new techniques to study the interaction between multiple energy vectors, and optimally coordinate the planning and operation of energy networks under uncertainty.

“The Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory has an established international reputation for its research in the areas of new insulating materials and condition monitoring of high voltage plantâ€?, says Professor Lewin. “It is very exciting that we will be making a significant contribution to the future directions of UK research in these areas, through our involvement with HubNet."

It is not just development of the new network and its effective operation that needs to be considered, but also the development of the next generation of Power Engineers who will design, implement, manage and maintain future networks. The HV Lab has a strong record and reputation for research-led teaching and this has been recognised in an award of £150K from the National HE STEM programme for graduate skills development of the energy industry.

This funding will provide electronic resources as work packages to graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to develop the skill sets they require for a career in the energy industry. These work packages will also be made available through the Energy and Utilities Sector Skills Council National Skills Academy for Power to the current workforce as a means to up-skill recent graduates from a non-electrical engineering or non-STEM degree background.

“Working with members of the Tony Davis High Voltage Laboratory at the University of Southampton, we are planning a complete range of innovative electronic study resources using the latest technology to train the next generation of Power Engineers,â€? says Professor Averil Macdonald, Regional Director of the HE STEM Programme at the University of Southampton. “Through the HE STEM Programme we will make these resources freely available to all UK HEIs as well as to power industry professionalsâ€?.

_______

If you are interested in doing a PhD in the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory, you will find more information on the ECS Postgraduate Opportunity pages.

For more information about this story contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

Professor Dame Wendy Hall has been elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest organization for computing professionals. Dame Wendy was President of the ACM from 2008 to 2010, the first person from outside North America to hold this position in the ACM’s prestigious 60-year history. Her Fellowship was awarded ‘for contributions to the semantic web and web science and for service to ACM and the international computing community.’

In the research policy arena Dame Wendy is now chairing ISTAG – the Advisory Group for the future direction of the European Commission’s ICT research beyond Framework 7. ISTAG is mandated to provide advice on strategy, objectives and scientific and technological priorities which will shape future research programmes, and the 25 members are drawn from leading universities and communications companies across Europe.

Dame Wendy is also currently featured in an exhibition at the Royal Society, London, of photographic portraits of 47 eminent scientists who are all Fellows of the Royal Society. The exhibition coincides with the end of the Royal Society’s celebrations of its 350th anniversary year, and the portraits, by Anne Purkiss, are also published in a book. Other scientists featured include Sir David Attenborough, Sir Patrick Moore, Richard Dawkins, Lord Krebs, and James Lovelock.

‘I am very honoured to be elected a Fellow of the ACM,’ said Dame Wendy, ‘and to be recognized both for my research and my service to the international community, which is a very significant part of my work. My latest role, as chair of ISTAG, is all about bridging the gap between academia and industry to ensure that research funding that is available is used to best effect. ISTAG has a very important role to play in shaping the future of ICT research in Europe.

‘To be included in the Royal Society exhibition in the company of some of the world’s leading scientists was another great honour, especially at the end of the year in which Web Science formed a major part of the Society’s anniversary celebrations.’

The annual Multimedia Systems Conference takes place in the School on Saturday 15 January.

The Conference is run entirely by undergraduate students participating in the Interactive Multimedia Systems module in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. In addition to providing the papers for the Conference the students also have to plan the event, which is open to all students in the University, and find sponsorship. This year’s event is sponsored by Imagination Technologies, a global leader in multimedia and communications technologies.

This year the presentations will cover five prominent areas of research in the field of Interactive Multimedia Systems. This includes: computer games and interactive fiction; virtual worlds; augmented and mixed reality; emerging display technology (3D, holographic, digital paper); and novel interfaces.

All the papers are available to read on the Conference web site, which also includes registration details and the event programme. The Conference is being held in the Mountbatten Building, and runs from 10 am to 4.30 pm.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453.

The first Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences Distinguished Lecture will be given on Monday 24 January by Professor David Payne, Director of the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre.

Professor David Payne, CBE, FRS, FREng, is one of the world’s leading researchers in photonics and fibre lasers. Over the last 35 years his research has established Southampton as a global force in optical fibre communications and laser technology and he has won a string of awards recognizing his research breakthroughs which have transformed the world’s telecommunications. In this lecture, entitled ‘Photonics: The Century of Light’, he considers the continuing huge potential of optical fibres and the future opportunities this represents for the University’s new Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences.

The lecture will be chaired by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean of the Faculty, and takes place at 5 pm, in the Main Lecture Theatre of Building 32. Refreshments will be available before the lecture from 4.30 pm in the B32 Foyer, and there will be a wine reception afterwards in the B32 coffee room (level 4). All are welcome and no tickets are required.

Lecture Abstract: Powering the optical fibre internet with its huge global reach, photonics has changed our lives. Optical fibres snake across continents and oceans carrying terabits per second of data in a vast information network that brings untold human connectivity. How did this happen and is that the end of it? Capacity demand continues to grow at a startling rate, doubling every two years, while the internet is estimated as burning 4% of world energy usage. The optical internet is reaching its capacity limits. The solution to these consequences of unbridled demand is more photonics, reaching further into the network with optics to overcome the existing bottlenecks and employing next-generation optical components. The great success of optical fibres and planar circuits in telecommunications has generated numerous applications in a number of related fields, such as sensing, bio- and nano-photonics and high-power lasers. Incredibly, the same fibres that carry tiny internet signals can also generate kilowatts of power, sufficient to cut through inch-thick steel. Southampton has an enviable track record of innovation in ICT and photonics. Building new technologies and applications through harnessing the properties of new optical materials, devices and structures is a huge opportunity for our new Faculty.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453.

The first Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences Distinguished Lecture was given this week by Professor David Payne, Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

Describing David Payne as the new Faculty’s ‘greatest asset’, Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean, said that he had brought prestige and major research funding to the University and ‘awards, honours and success’. She also paid tribute to his loyalty to the University, which he joined as an undergraduate student in 1963, and to his development and leadership of the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

One of the world’s leading researchers in photonics and fibre lasers, David Payne has undertaken research which has established Southampton as a global force in optical fibre communications and laser technology. He has won a string of awards recognizing his research breakthroughs which have transformed the world’s telecommunications.

In his lecture, entitled ‘Photonics: The Century of Light’, Professor Payne considered the continuing huge potential of optical fibres and the future opportunities this represents for the new Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences.

He explained the key role that photonics had played in powering the optical fibre internet with its huge global reach, and examined how this had happened. With no end in sight to the current demand for increased connectivity Professor Payne called for more photonics, reaching further into the network with optics to overcome the existing bottlenecks and employing next-generation optical components.

He also demonstrated that the great success of optical fibres and planar circuits in telecommunications has generated numerous applications in a number of related fields, such as sensing, bio- and nano-photonics and high-power lasers. Incredibly, the same fibres that carry tiny internet signals can also generate kilowatts of power, sufficient to cut through inch-thick steel. Southampton has an enviable track record of innovation in ICT and photonics. Building new technologies and applications through harnessing the properties of new optical materials, devices and structures is, he suggested, a huge opportunity for our new Faculty.

You can watch a video of the lecture at: http://archive.zepler.tv/324/

The next Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences Distinguished Lecture takes place on Thursday 12 May and will be given by Professor Tony Hey, former Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, and now Corporate Vice-President for External Research at Microsoft.

Fifty-five of the UK’s leading graduate technology recruiters will be attending the ECS Engineering and Technology Careers Fair on Wednesday 2 February.

Despite the economic downturn, and the current bleak news about graduate recruitment, highly skilled and capable graduates are still very much in demand, and Southampton students have a very strong reputation for the breadth and depth of their knowledge of different technologies, as well as for the strong mix of practical and theoretical understanding gained in their degree programmes.

This year’s Fair, the fourth in the series, is 50 per cent larger than last year’s. Companies attending will be offering graduate recruitment opportunities, as well as summer internships and industrial placements, and aiming to build relationships with students as they progress through their degrees. Many of the companies also sponsor student activities in the School, provide prizes and awards for academic course modules, and pay regular visits to give technology presentations.

Imagination Technologies is one of the country’s leading technology companies and a regular recruiter of ECS graduates, whose skills and knowledge fits well with the company’s needs. Its multimedia and communications semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP) cores are at the heart of today's most innovative and exciting consumer electronics products and the company relies on recruiting leading graduates.

“We believe it is critical for industry and universities to work together to mutually benefit,â€? says Raeeka Yassaie of Imagination Technologies. “As a company we are represented on the Industrial Liaison Board in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. This helps us maintain a strong understanding of the teaching ECS delivers and we are also able to advise and influence so that the School can ensure it is producing graduates with the skills that industry needs.

“We attend and sponsor many events each year across UK universities with strong engineering and computing departments, including sponsorship of multiple events and attendance at a number of careers-focused activities in Southampton for ECS."

ECS has one of the UK’s best records for the employability of its graduates. In last year’s University league tables, ECS Electronics and Electrical Engineering employability ranking (indicating the percentage of students in graduate jobs or further training six months after graduation) was 98/97 per cent - the highest in the subject table, and among the top ten rankings in the UK for any subjects (outside Medicine and Healthcare).

“It’s essential that we produce graduates who have the skills and understanding to play an effective role in developing future technologies,â€? says Professor Alun Vaughan, Deputy Head of School (Education). “As a School we have worked hard over recent years to ensure that our courses are providing our students with the skills needed in the workplace. We also place a very high value on our employer liaison activity, including our annual Careers Fair and our Careers Hub web site.

“This enables students to work closely with companies who can sponsor projects and course modules, to take up summer internships and work placements in vacations, and to have the best possible information about employment opportunities.â€?

Over 1000 students attended last year's event, and so this year's Fair is already hotly anticipated. The event takes place in the Garden Court, Students' Union, on the Highfield Campus, from 11 am to 3.00 pm on Wednesday 2 February, and is open to all students in the University, with a particular emphasis on engineering and technology degrees.

The Fair brochure with a list of companies attending is here: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/careers/resources/careers_fair_brochure_2011.pdf

For further information about the ECS Careers Fair or the School's careers activity, contact Joyce Lewis

The Mountbatten Building was officially declared open last Friday 28 January by the Rt Hon David Willetts, Minister for Universities and Science.

During an event postponed from December when it had to be cancelled because of the heavy snow, Mr Willetts unveiled a commemorative plaque in the Mountbatten Atrium, and then toured the facilities in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre and in the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

He paid tribute to all those who had been involved in the reconstruction of the Mountbatten Building and to the ‘spirit of the University of Southampton’ in ensuring that the new Building is bigger and better than before.

He also announced £7.2M of investment in research that could revolutionize the Internet. Led by Professor David Payne of the Optoelectronics Research Centre, the 'Photonics HyperHighway' project will bring together world-leading scientists from the universities of Southampton and Essex and industry partners, including BBC Research and Development, to pioneer new technologies capable of making broadband internet 100 times faster.

The six-year project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will look at the way fibre optics are used, and develop new materials and devices to increase internet bandwidth. This will ensure that the Web can cope with rising demand for broadband and the increasing use of services such as internet television and music downloads.

‘Since much of the technology that powers today’s Internet came from right here at the University of Southampton, we’re the obvious people to develop the next generation,’ said Professor David Payne.

Stephen Fry is backing a fantastic, new development that has made the reporting of inaccessible websites a simple, one click process. The Fix the Web project is harnessing volunteer energy to tackle reports of web accessibility problems. Disabled people can now report sites to volunteers using a toolbar, called the ATBar, developed by researchers from the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Recently launched, Fix the Web is already making great progress addressing websites that are inaccessible for disabled and older users. There is an impressive groundswell of support for the campaign, with 388 reported sites and 296 volunteers, 20 sites are already fixed and many more are in progress. Where sites do not get fixed, the project at least aims to significantly raise awareness of the issues, focused on change in the long term.

The process for a disabled person to report an inaccessible site is very simple, taking less than a minute. Quick to set up from www.fixtheweb.net/toolbar the ATBar has a 'Fix the Web' button that launches a report form. Volunteers then take the reports through a checking process and send them on to website owners, with information about web accessibility. Ingeniously designed, the ATBar also incorporates text-resize, Text to Speech, style and reference setting buttons.

Stephen Fry comments: “We all expect a few glitches when we go online, but when it comes to accessibility for disabled and older people, the problem is colossal. Fix the Web is doing something about it in a positive and practical way – I urge you to get involved and help get this problem fixed. Fix the Web gets to the very heart of the problem – it’s pure genius!â€?

The development team of Sebastian Skuse, Dr Mike Wald and E.A. Draffan from the Learning Societies Lab at Southampton, are official partners of Fix the Web led by Citizens Online and funded by the Nominet Trust. Fix the Web is proud to be working in partnership with AbilityNet, Bloor Research, Hanona and Nomensa.

The idea of the toolbar has also been supported by JISC-funded OSS Watch who provide advice on the use, development, and licensing of free source software. The team aim to build a community around the project and take it forward through their recently awarded JISC REALISE project. Over the last six months there have been over 3 million 'toolbar hits' on the ATBar.

There are a number of other easy options for website reporting to Fix the Web: through a form on the site: www.fixtheweb.net, via twitter (#fixtheweb #fail, url and the problem) or by emailing post@fixtheweb though the toolbar is likely to be the fastest option.

As the Internet address system reaches its end, an ECS researcher warns that deployment of the new generation of addresses needs to speed up to maintain Internet services.

With the Internet likely to reach a major milestone at 2.30 this Thursday 3 February, when the very last of the unused IPv4 address space is allocated to Regional Registries, and so on to ISPs, a University of Southampton researcher says that careful planning by developers and engineers, dating back to the mid-1990s, has provided the capability for the Internet to continue to grow beyond the depletion of the original addressing system.

However, Dr Tim Chown of the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science, warns that deployment of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6, is still in its infancy, and will need to grow faster to sustain the massive demand for new Internet services.

The IPv4 Internet Protocol has ‘run’ the Internet since its earliest days, using a 32-bit numeric address and providing up to 4 billion unique addresses for hosts or routers. But according to Dr Chown, ‘The Internet has become a victim of its own success meaning that the available IPv4 address is almost depleted.’

‘This doesn’t mean the Internet will stop working,’ he says – ‘far from it! Existing users won't notice a difference, and Internet life will go on. But it’s likely that a market for IPv4 address blocks will form as organizations start trading address space, and more use of address sharing and NAT is inevitable.’

Having recognized the problems that would be caused by the exhaustion of the IPv4 addresses, Dr Chown and colleagues around the world have been working on the next generation of Internet address protocols, IPv6. Dr Chown has been an active member of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which has been working on IPv6 since the mid-1990s. With 128 bits of address space, IPv6 will provide enough addresses for Internet growth for the foreseeable future and enable the Internet to grow in new directions.

“As researchers begin to look into innovative new uses of Internet Protocols for networking billions of new types of devices, in the 'Internet of Things', a new, much larger addressing system for those devices will be vital,â€? says Dr Chown. “The challenge over recent years has been for researchers, developers and vendors to standardise IPv6 and produce products that support its use - and most importantly to devise ways for IPv4 and IPv6 to coexist and work together on today's Internet infrastructure, allowing IPv6 to be gradually introduced while IPv4 continues to operate.â€?

The first UK native leased line using IPv6 was run as far back as 1997 at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). The work carried out by Dr Chown and his colleagues in ECS has ensured that IPv6 has been standardized and that operational experience has been fed into the development process. Today IPv6 support is available in almost all modern router and operating system platforms, including Windows 7, MacOS X and Linux. The data network in ECS runs both IPv4 and IPv6 alongside each other, a method known as dual-stack, and many of the School’s public-facing services including web, mail and DNS are available via IPv6 as well as IPv4. The deployment in ECS has helped validate the IETF protocols and their implementations by showing that IPv6 can be run successfully alongside IPv4 in production networks.

“Today's students will graduate into a world where new IPv4 address space will be very hard to acquire and where IPv6 will be the future. So it's great that we can give them the insight and experience of IPv6 while studying here,â€? says Dr Chown.

Currently only a handful of UK ISPs offer IPv6 to their customers, and the biggest UK production deployment is on JANET, the UK academic network, and some of the universities it serves. IPv6 deployment is growing, but still in its infancy, and will need to grow faster to sustain the massive demand for new Internet services worldwide.

For this reason the Internet Society is working with major Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Cisco, Akamai and others to test IPv6 on World IPv6 Day, scheduled for 8 June 2011. Organizations will be encouraged to make their services available over IPv6 on this day, to evaluate how ready they, and the Internet, are for widespread IPv6 deployment. While Google and Facebook already offer their content via IPv6 in a limited way, this potentially massive test of the Internet infrastructure will be an important day for IPv6.

A new transistor made from graphene - the world’s thinnest material – has been developed by a research team at the University of Southampton in the new world-class Southampton Nanofabrication Centre.

The new transistor achieves a record high-switching performance which will make our future electronic devices - such as PDAs and computers - even more functional and high-performance.

In a paper published in 'Electronics Letters' today (3 February 2011), Dr Zakaria Moktadir of the Nano research group at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) describes how his research into graphene, a material made from a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb structure, led to the development of graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) with a unique channel structure at nanoscale.

According to Dr Moktadir, in the context of electronics, graphene could potentially replace or at least be used side by side with silicon integrations. "CMOS (Silicon Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) downscaling is reaching its limits and we need to find a suitable alternative,â€? he says. "Other researchers had looked at graphene as a possibility, but found that one of the drawbacks was that graphene’s intrinsic physical properties make it difficult to turn off the current flow."

Dr Moktadir discovered that by introducing geometrical singularities (such as sharp bends and corners) in bilayer graphene nanowires, the current could be turned off efficiently.

According to Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, Head of the Nano group, this engineering approach has achieved an on/off switching ratio 1000 times higher than previous attempts. "Enormous effort has been made across the world to pinch off the channel of GFETs electrostatically, but the existing approaches require either the channel width to be much narrower than 10 nm or a very high voltage to be applied vertically across bilayer graphene layers. This hasn’t achieved an on/off ratio which is high enough, and is not viable for practical use."

Dr Moktadir developed this transistor using the new helium ion beam microscope and a focused gallium ion beam system in the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, which has some of the best nanofabrication facilities in the world.

"This is a breakthrough in the ongoing quest to develop advanced transistors as we progress beyond our current CMOS technology,â€? said Professor Harvey Rutt, Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. “It will have major implications for next generation computer, communication and electronic systems. Introducing geometrical singularities into the graphene channel is a new concept which achieves superior performance while keeping the GFET structure simple and therefore commercially exploitable.â€? Having created the transistor, Dr Moktadir is now undertaking further research to understand the mechanism which causes the current to stop flowing in the channel, testing its reliability and performance under various noise and temperature conditions.

His paper: 'A U-shaped bilayer graphene channel transistor with a very high Ion/Ioff ratio' is available from Joyce Lewis.

-------

This research was undertaken in the Nano research group of the School of Electronics and Computer Science. If you are interested in undertaking postgraduate research in this group, see our Postgraduate admissions page.

For further information on this news story, contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453.