ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton is delighted to announce the establishment of the Winton Capital Prizes, which will be awarded to the top students in Computer Science over the next three years.

As the UK’s largest and most successful integrated department of Computer Science and Electronics, ECS has a world-leading reputation for its education and research which draws students to the University from around the world. Over the last 20 years ECS has made fundamental contributions to the development of the Web, to the establishment of agent technologies, to Open Access publishing and digital libraries, and to a range of other technologies at the forefront of computer science.

Winton‘s philanthropic support will establish three prizes: for the top student in Computer Science Year 1; the top final-year student on the four-year MEng programme in Computer Science; and the top student on the one-year postgraduate MSc in Software Engineering.

The Winton Prizes will be awarded for the first time in July 2011 at the University's graduation ceremonies.

Matthew Beddall, Winton Capital’s Chief Investment Officer and a Southampton graduate (Maths/Computer Science 2001), comments: “Winton is a scientific research organisation which uses the financial markets as our laboratory. I started here as a summer intern when I was still a student at Southampton and without the University’s teaching and scientific training I would not have been in a position to take advantage of the opportunity. I am delighted that Winton is now able to give something back to the University.â€?

“We are very pleased to acknowledge the generosity of Winton Capital in making these awards,â€? said Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean of Physical and Applied Sciences.

“It is well known that our courses are intensive and challenging and our students work extremely hard. These prizes will be a great recognition of their effort, especially at times of financial stringency and will improve our ability to recruit the best and brightest students from around the world. “We very much look forward to working with Winton over the next three years and to welcoming the company to ECS to meet our students.â€?

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

Web Science is one of the main opportunities for ensuring the healthy development of the future Web, according to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, keynote speaker at the conference ‘Profiting from the New Web’, held in London this week.

An audience drawn largely from the technology sector heard Sir Tim outline his hopes for the Web’s future, along with some warnings about potential limitations to the development of the Web. His keynote set the scene for a full day of discussion about new ways of doing business that have been enabled by the Web and will make a significant difference to business practice in the future.

Sir Tim, creator of the World Wide Web, pointed to open data and linked data as exciting examples of the way that the Web is promoting transparency of information and looked forward to the time when the current 20 per cent of the world’s population who can access the Web grows to 80 per cent, with all the changes this will bring in terms of technological and social developments, and new possibilities of communication and cultural change.

“Maybe our ideas of democracies will be different,â€? he said. “Maybe people will build systems that we can use to communicate across boundaries … or maybe we won’t …. Whatever happens at this stage we have to think about it - and what we think about it we call Web Science.â€?

Panel discussions during the day covered the value of open data, the importance of new platforms, social analytics, and the pervasiveness of new media in business communications, with examples drawn from companies such as Talis, Mendeley, BT, Nominet, Microsoft, Edelman, The Times, and IBM. Speakers included Dame Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt, Bill Thompson, Mike Galvin, Charlie Beckett, Hector Arthur, Graham Spittle and Noshir Contractor. The conference was a joint event organized by the Web Science Trust and Intellect, and sponsored by Nominet, Assanka, and Memset.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and Director of the World Wide Web Foundation. He is Professor of Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He is Open Data Advisor to the UK Government and a Member of the UK Public Sector Transparency Board. He is a Co-Founder and Director of the Web Science Trust.

The Web Science Trust was established in 2009 at the University of Southampton to raise awareness of Web Science and to build the foundations and framework for Web Science. The Trust’s main aim is to advance education and research in Web Science for the benefit of Society.

Watch the Conference Video.

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

For information on PhD fully-funded studentships in Web Science, see our Doctoral Training Centre opportunities.

ECS-Electronics and Computer Science has a longstanding relationship with SELEX Communications, covering undergraduate projects and graduate employment, as well as joint research.

The company is a regular sponsor of the ECS Group Design Project, a flagship activity which is a major part of the final year of the prestigious Master of Engineering degree programme. A group of students spend 12 weeks working intensively for an industrial client on a real project, delivering a 25,000 word report and possibly a working prototype system as a solution. This year, under the direction of Tim Moorhouse of SELEX, the project involved modelling Interrogator Side Lobe Suppression of the Mode Select (Mode S) civilian radar waveform using a sound wave of similar wavelength to the Identification Friend-or-Foe system. The antenna system and sound wavelengths were both scaled down to allow the model to be fitted into a small area, and a generic fighter jet antenna modelled as an array of loudspeakers.

The aim was to ensure the phase reduction observed at angles off the direction the radar is pointing. The beam steering capabilities of the antenna array was demonstrated by controlling the phase of the sound sent by each loudspeaker. Tim comments, “This year’s project was a great success. The ECS team successfully created the system which demonstrated the phase change. A detection system was created which detected the amount of phase change, the phase change was measured, and it matched the theoretically predicted phase dependence.â€?

The students are pictured here with their ECS supervisor, Dr Jeff Reeve; (l-r)Aaron Bruty, Ricky Patel, Wijendra Gnanendren, and Caleb Ng.

Electronics and Electrical Engineering at ECS came top in this year's league table of university subjects, published in The Guardian. 'We are delighted with this result,' said Professor Neil White, Head of ECS. 'It is a great tribute to our staff and our students, and underlines why leading companies like SELEX are keen to work with us on undergraduate projects and to employ our students.'

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

The final of this year’s Student Robotics event was a day of triumph and disaster, as 15 teams from 14 schools, from as far away as Grenoble, came together for the final showdown at the University of Southampton.

Each team had designed and built a robot able to navigate a course littered with other robots and red bean cans which had to be collected to gain points. In a number of different challenges the robots could amass additional points by completing different manoeuvres. The robots were fitted with sensors systems, including vision and distance sensors.

As always, the day was magnificently organized and administered by the Student Robotics team, based in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, and including University of Southampton alumni who have themselves been part of Student Robotics over the last six years. The final challenge takes place in a specially constructed arena in The Cube at the Students' Union.

After a gruelling day including 32 matches in a league scenario followed by an exciting knock-out stage, Taunton’s College Southampton were declared the winners, snatching the title from previous winners Peter Symond’s College Winchester.

Prizes were presented to the winning teams by Professor Neil White, Head of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, who congratulated all the teams on their hard work, enthusiasm, and imaginative use of technology over the preceding seven months which, he commented, were some of the key qualities that were needed in the future by the UK engineering industry.

Each of the schools taking part in the competition received regular mentoring from a member of the Student Robotics team, helping them to design, build and programme a robot to take part in the competition. The winning team at Taunton’s College was mentored by ECS student Chris Kirkham, who is in the second year of an MEng Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence.

You can find out more about the challenge and the final event on the Student Robotics web site.

See our photostream of the day.

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

ECS student Joe Mcloughlin will be moving across campus to the University Students’ Union after his graduation this summer.

With his MEng in Electronic Engineering almost completed, he will take up the one-year sabbatical post of Union Vice-President for Media and Communications.

Joe achieved this position after an intense and hard-fought election campaign earlier this year when he spoke to many students, gaining their views on the Union and the University. He now aims to put this experience to good work as he takes on a key role that covers all the Union’s communications channels with the University’s 22,000 students.

Joe developed his interest in communications and leadership on Surge Radio - where he had his own show in his third year, and then took over running the station this academic year. Surge is run by the students themselves, drawing on a team of interns and volunteers, who were led by Joe. “We needed as many volunteers as possible and I had to inspire them,â€? he says. “I loved doing it, and learned so much.â€?

He also enjoyed the election campaign, and used it to find out what the students want from the Union. “I’d like to see Union communications focus more on what Southampton students want,â€? he comments. “Communications are a way of us getting messages across about important student issues, such as housing, what’s happening with the University restructuring and the curriculum changes.

“SUSU isn’t just a building,â€? he says. “Not all the students go there, so it should be a much bigger concept. It’s there for all the students and it should be involved in everything that affects them.â€?

Joe’s first big task when he starts his job next month will be to organize Freshers’ Week. With his own experience of being a Fresher not far away he’ll be aiming to create something that will be valuable and relevant.

Despite not continuing with Electronics in the future Joe says that he’s confident he will use the experience of being an engineer. “I love electronicsâ€?, he says, “but there are lots of other things I’d like to do in the future.â€?

Second-year Electronics students were presented with a testing and unusual ‘time-travel’ challenge in this year's Systems Design Exercise. Known to generations of students as ‘D4’, the project was sponsored for the second time by Detica, with components provided by TI.

Working in teams of four to six students for just 11 days, the students were asked to use state-of-the-art components to build a handheld video game system that could be taken back in time and marketed competitively in 1985. Judging criteria for the product’s success were defined as performance, features, price, aesthetics, and innovation.

The teams received precise specifications: for example, the device had to feature graphics and audio that would appeal to the 1985 market. The teams were also asked to make a video advert for their product and take part in a competitive pitch for their design in front of the judges and their classmates.

The judges were Dr Matt Sacker of the Detica Electronic Systems Group and an alumnus of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, along with Tim Forcer of ECS and Bob Bacon of TI.

"ECS actively encourages the involvement of industry-leading electronics companies in its undergraduate programmes, said Professor Steve Gunn, Course Leader. “This is great for the students - they hear about the latest developments in this fast-moving industry and have an opportunity to find out what employers are looking for in the next generation of electronic engineers.â€?

Pressure on the students was intense as they worked round the clock to design their handheld video game systems. Against a set of tough specifications, the students worked in groups, partitioning a large task amongst the individual team members. The students were expected to show initiative, creativity and innovation, to deploy good time management and trouble-shooting skills, and to undertake technical and market research, costing and budget analysis.

During the final judging session, Dr Sacker congratulated the students on the quality of what they had achieved: “The quality of the work produced by the students this year was much greater than when I was a student 10 years agoâ€?, he said. Describing the kinds of careers available in Detica and the quality of students for which the company is looking, Dr Sacker said that ECS students had a real advantage in the job market because of their experience of project work. “You have something very substantial that you can talk about at interviews as a result of your projects and real world experience, and that really makes Southampton students stand out,â€? he said.

The year 1985 was chosen for the time-travel element of the project because, according to ECS Electronics lecturer Dr Rob Maunder, it represented the golden age of bedroom video game development, when successful video games could be written by a few developers, in a few weeks. “As games became more sophisticated, video game development became the exclusive domain of large development teams, with large budgets and long timescales,â€? said Rob. “However, with the recent emergence of mobile phone gaming and indie game distribution channels, a second age of bedroom video game development is flourishing and we wanted to tap into this for D4.â€?

The winning team members were: Thomas Conheeney, Robert Gillott, Michael Smith, Matthew Brejza and Thomas Olak. Each received £100 from Detica for their prize. Course leaders were Professor Steve Gunn, Dr Geoff Merrett and Dr Rob Maunder, with support from Tim Forcer, Jeff Hooker and Dave Oakley.

You can find out more about project work at ECS in our Project Work video.

For further information contact Joyce Lewis.

Research on gait biometrics at the University of Southampton has passed another landmark with the first public demonstration of the technology’s ability to withstand deliberate spooking.

In a programme shown in the Discovery Channel’s 'Planet Earth' series, Professor Mark Nixon of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science explained how his research on gait – the way we walk – has progressed over the years. The programme was filmed in the ECS Biometrics Tunnel – the only one of its kind in the world. The technology based in the Tunnel combines and processes data from 12 cameras to produce an individual 'signature' of a person’s walk that is unique and recognizable with over 90 per cent accuracy.

In the first public test of the system, Professor Nixon and two of his PhD students, John Bustard and Darko Matovski, tried to fool the software by swapping clothes, wearing hats and scarves, and even a motorcycle helmet. The technology stood up to all these tests and Professor Nixon explained how this robustness has been able to help the UK police and security services. It may even be able to detect padding underneath clothing – for example, the changed body profile and walk of a suicide bomber.

“People are unique by quite a variety of different measures,â€? said Professor Nixon, “and that rich diversity is fascinating.â€?

Watch the Discovery Channel video.

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

The biggest test of IPv6 in action took place on Wednesday 8 June when ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton joined the world's major content providers including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, CNN and the BBC in the Internet Society's World IPv6 Day.

Companies and organizations around the world offered their content and services for 24 hours over the new IPv6 Internet Protocol. ECS has been contributing to the development of IPv6 for many years, and runs IPv6 throughout its own network, so was able to participate fully and help validate the new technology by encouraging its staff and students to use Facebook, YouTube, the BBC and other sites available via IPv6 on the day.

IPv6 is the successor to the existing IPv4 protocol that enables the vast majority of the Internet to work today. The current challenge is that the last unused IPv4 address space was allocated to Regional Registries in February this year, so it's becoming very important for everyone concerned with future Internet growth to gain experience with and to begin deploying IPv6. The new protocol can run alongside IPv4 - a process known as 'dual-stack' - for the foreseeable future, but eventually IPv6 will become the dominant Internet Protocol as its much larger address space will allow billions of new devices to connect to the Internet.

ECS has been researching and using IPv6 for several years, but to date there has been very little high profile content available via IPv6 outside of other academic research networks. On Wednesday, as ECS staff and students used their normal web browsers to access many of the world's top commercial web sites, those connections were running over IPv6 rather than tIPv4. The event proved that IPv6 is mature and ready for wider deployment, and also equally importantly that other people still using IPv4 were not adversely affected by Google, Facebook and others offering their content over both protocols.

"We shipped over 100GB of IPv6 traffic on 8 June, which was significantly more than we've ever done before, without any reports of connectivity problems for our users," said Dr Tim Chown, who has led ECS's IPv6 research and deployment work since the late 1990's. "It's been a fantastic day for the future of the Internet. The fact that the general public wouldn't have noticed anything different on Wednesday, while some of the world's most popular web sites ran IPv6 alongside IPv4 is a huge success. It's a great testament to all those people who have been working for many years to make IPv6 what it is today, and of course to the Internet Society for arranging this first coordinated IPv6 test flight. We've just begun analysing all the data we've collected from the day, and are already hopeful that a World IPv6 Week won't be too far away now."

ECS' home web site has been available dual-stack, via both IPv4 and IPv6, for many years. While Google, Facebook, the BBC and other World IPv6 Day participants will also be analysing the data they've gathered, some sites have been left available over IPv6 since Wednesday, including some of Google's YouTube video content, the Facebook developer's site at developers.facebook.com and Microsoft's gaming site at www.xbox.com. "While previous measurements by Google and other researchers have shown that as few as 0.05% of users have problems connecting to dual-stack sites, that's still a lot of people," said Dr Chown. "Wednesday's data will help Google and others to get that figure even lower, so that turning on IPv6 permanently for all their services becomes a real possibility. The challenge then is to encourage ISPs to deploy IPv6 to their customers. While IPv6 deployment is growing in academic networks, the larger commercial ISPs are lagging behind, especially in the UK."

Mat Ford, Technology Program Manager at the Internet Society commented "IPv6 deployment is fundamentally about the future scalability and utility of the Internet, and World IPv6 Day was a major milestone in the road towards that deployment. The day was always about exposing the diversity of the Internet's networks and users to IPv6 connectivity, so support from a long-established and thriving IPv6 network like that at ECS was extremely welcome. At the Internet Society, we've been thrilled with the support for the event, and it's very gratifying to see that many participants have seen this 'call-to-arms' as an opportunity to enable IPv6 and leave it enabled."

Friday 16 July will be a busy and high-profile day for Dr Mike Wald. Not only is he presenting at the ‘1st Digital Agenda Assembly’ for Europe, taking place in Brussels, but as a finalist in this year’s prestigious Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards, he will be attending the awards ceremony on the same day.

The Digital Assembly is organized by the European Commission’s Information Society and is part of the Digital Agenda for Europe initiative. The focus of the event is on shaping and co-creating a barrier-free digital Europe by people with disabilities themselves, in line with policy, technology, innovation and cooperation perspectives. Web accessibility for public and private online services plays a crucial part in this agenda. Dr Wald will be presenting his work on Synote, which has won wide recognition for its ability to transform learning for all students, including those with disabilities. Synote makes multimedia resources such as video and audio easier to access, search, manage, and exploit. Learners, teachers and other users can create notes, bookmarks, tags, links, images and text captions synchronised to any part of a recording, such as a lecture.

In a further initiative, Dr Wald will be talking about how Synote has incorporated crowdsourcing to provide a sustainable method of making audio or video recordings accessible to people who find it difficult to understand speech through hearing alone.

He comments: “Automatic captioning of lectures is possible using speech recognition technologies but it results in recognition errors requiring manual correction and this is costly and time-consuming. 'Crowdsourcing' the corrections of speech recognition transcription errors is a sustainable way of captioning lecture recordings.â€?

Dr Wald will be presenting remotely because he will be attending the Awards Ceremony in London with the University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Don Nutbeam, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Education, Professor Debra Humphris. The University of Southampton has been shortlisted for the ‘ICT Initiative of the Year Award’ for its support and development of Synote.

"I am delighted that Synote has been appreciated and used throughout the world and has won and been nominated for so many awards since the first version was made available in 2008," said Dr Wald. ______

Dr Mike Wald is a member of the Learning Societies Lab in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science. If you are interested in doing PhD research in this group, you will find more information on our Postgraduate Admissions Pages.

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

Dr Mike Short, Deputy President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and Vice-President of Telefonica Europe, was keynote speaker at this year’s Zepler Day event for final-year MEng students and MSc students in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science.

The event marks the completion of the MEng students’ coursework, part of which is presented as a project poster. This year around 115 posters were displayed in the Mountbatten and Zepler Buildings. Zepler Day marks the contribution to electronics and wireless communications of the founder of ECS, Professor Eric Zepler, whose spirit of innovation and dedication to the advancement of new technologies remain fundamental commitments of ECS today. The students and academics were joined by guests including employers and local businesspeople.

In his address Dr Short discussed some of the issues that are facing the world today and the potential that exists for networked services to help provide new approaches to alleviating and solving them. Eric Cooke, Senior Tutor, who provided the final words of thanks to the students for their contribution to the School, said: ‘If you want to invent the future the best way is to work with people who are doing that already and ECS is a great place to see that happen.

‘I’m really looking forward to living in the world that you are going to invent for me!’

Graduation ceremonies for ECS students takes place this year on Monday 25 July.

Watch our video of Project Work in ECS-Electronics and Computer Science.

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