Silicon Valley comes to Southampton this weekend when budding entrepreneurs are invited to take part in a national competition to learn how to build a successful start-up business.

From Friday 9 to Sunday 11 November, the University of Southampton will be hosting a Silicon Valley comes to UK 2012 StartUp Weekend. It is a 56-hour, non-stop national competition where teams with individuals holding different skill sets compete to build a successful start-up business. Over the course of the weekend, participants of all ages and backgrounds will work together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch start-ups.

The teams will be free to work on any start-up they want but they have to use Open Data and will have access to UK government data sets from data.gov.uk. Participants will use this data to produce high-impact websites and applications, for platforms such as Facebook and Android, to unlock the power of public data.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams design and develop business plans, while constantly refining their start-up ideas. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and win prizes. The judges will also choose a winner to attend an exclusive awards ceremony in London and the chance to compete in the Global Startup Battle.

The winner of last year’s national event was Alejandro Saucedo, an Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) student from the University of Southampton, and he is organising this year’s event with his fellow students Maraim Masoud from ECS and Petar Trifonov from Management. Alejandro says: “It was truly a life-changing experience, that amazing opportunity taught me not to fear failure and to take risks. We want another student to have this amazing experience.â€?

It costs £40 to register (£15 for students) and interested participants can register at www.southampton.startupweekend.org

Leto, an innovative company co-founded by ECS alumnus Alex Berezovsky, is the main sponsor for the Southampton Startup Weekend, one of a number of events taking place simultaneously across the globe this weekend (9-11 November), to celebrate innovation and enterprise in the tech community.

The Startup Weekend has spread virally across the world into almost every tech community. People of different backgrounds (developers, designers, marketers and many others) come together for an intensive 56 hours. During this time the aim is to develop startups (web or/and mobile applications) that aim to “rewrite the rules of the new economyâ€? using open data provided by Government.

Leto is the main sponsor for the Southampton event. The London-based technological innovation company works closely with startups by offering them lean software development, while also offering innovation consultancy for larger companies that wish to expand on their services and products.

Leto was co-founded by ECS Computer Science alumnus, Alex Berezovsky - now CEO of the company which has already employed eight Southampton alumni as graduates or interns.

On the first day of the Startup Weekend (Friday night) people have an opportunity to meet and network; afterwards, those with bright ideas in mind start pitching to try and inspire others, and the teams form around the winning ideas.

Technically, there is only one day and two nights to work on the product (including prototype development and writing business plan), as Sunday morning is spent wrapping things up. Final presentations and the winner announcement are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

Southampton Startup will be judged by Don Spalinger, Director of Research and Innovation Services at the University, Professor Simon Cox, Associate Dean for Enterprise in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, and Penny Smout - CEO of Hawk Conservancy Trust, who has more than 15 years’ experience working with startups in the US and UK.

Southampton Startup Weekend will be a great test of ECS students’ techie stamina and their skills and enterprise, but it’s an even greater opportunity to experience the entire product cycle - from its early draft idea stage to actual product launch.

Throughout the event, contestants have an opportunity to get help and one-to-one advice from mentors, so they can build on their personal and team strengths. Prizes for the national competition will be awarded by David Cameron in London, and the top startups will be invited to the awards ceremony in London, not to mention a fully paid trip to Silicon Valley in California.

Southampton is one of five UK destinations with similar events being held in London, Cambridge, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as in many cities around the world.

You can follow progress of the Southampton event at: http://southampton.startupweekend.org/

Our picture (above right) includes Alex Berezovsky (third from the left) and other members of the team including ECS alumni (from left to right) Joe Conway, Martin Warne, Trinity Gorman and on the right Sukh Plaha. Second from the right is Oleg Gerasimenko, co-founder of Leto.

Driving 10,000 miles across Europe and Asia to deliver ambulances to Mongolia and taking part in the Mont Blanc Marathon were just two of the activities that our students were able to undertake this summer as a result of support from The Head of School Fund for ECS.

The Fund enables students in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS ) at the University of Southampton to undertake activities which enhance their personal development – these might be voluntary service, charitable or educational, or any initiative of value to the broader community, for which additional funding is required to achieve success.

The Fund is provided through the generosity of ECS alumni, in response to the annual telephone campaign and through other personal donations. In 2012, as a result of grants made from the Fund, ECS students were able to deliver two ambulances to the people of Mongolia, cycle from London to Budapest, take part in the Mont Blanc Marathon, undertake community projects in Fiji and Manila, attend a leading academic conference in Germany, and support University student performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Reporting on their experiences our students commented:

‘Our team of four students set ourselves a challenge to cycle from London to Budapest after Graduation. Our motivations were cultural exploration, physical training and charitable contribution – we met or exceeded all our targets – including our fundraising which resulted in donations totalling £1700 to Save the Children and the Southampton Hospital Charity. A massive thank you to everyone who has sponsored us both in the run up and during our adventure!’ http://www.budapedal.wordpress.com

Alex Coleman Cole volunteered to work in Fiji, teaching English in a village school, and helping construct community projects such as irrigation and recycling. He writes: ‘This trip has given me a beter idea of my position and how lucky I am to be here. I have made many new friends. I have a second family to go back to over there and have learned many useful new skills.’

ECS students delivered two ambulances to Mongolia, driving 10,000 miles across Europe and Asia, as part of the Mongolia Challenge Rally organized by Go Help (a charity established some years ago by a team including ECS graduate Stephen Edwards). Useful patient transport is in incredibly short supply in Mongolia and the ambulances, which were also stocked with large amounts of medical equipment from the team’s fundraising activities, are now being used by the health authority in Ulaanbaatar. http://www.sixdegreesofprocrastination.com/

James Prance and Craig Aylett attended the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe with the University Theatre Society and Showstoppers Group. Both James and Craig are members of StageSoc which helps provide lighting, sound and backstage support. Craig writes: ‘The Fringe is unlike anything else, with people coming from all around the world – it is something I will never forget.’ Tom Smith attended Games Developers Conference Europe as a volunteer. The event is held in Cologne each year and is a major gathering of the games industry. Tom writes: ‘It was very useful to be able to attend the event: I’m in touch with many of the volunteers I met there and intend to apply to volunteer again next year. I also made contact with several prominent games development students and learned a lot from attending the talks.’

Manol Dimitrov (pictured) took part in and completed the Mont Blanc Marathon - one of the toughest footraces in Europe, also raising money for Cancer Research UK. ‘A challenge like this is a major contribution to building character,’ he said, ‘and presents a rare opportunity to learn about yourself as an individual both from a physical and mental perspective.’

Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, comments: ‘We are grateful to ECS alumni for enabling our students to pursue these challenges. In their grant applications, our students stressed that financial support of this kind was fundamental to their ability to undertake these ambitious and often life-changing activities.’

To find out how you can support ECS students, please visit http://www.southampton.ac.uk/supportus or email annualgiving@southampton.ac.uk

The University of Southampton’s Solar Electric Boat Race Team is celebrating a successful year competing in the Solar Splash World Championships.

Team Tarka, a team of engineers from Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), came fifth overall in the 2012 Collegiate World Championships, in Cedar Falls, USA.

The five-day event is held annually in the USA and pitches intercollegiate teams against each other in a challenge to design and build a vessel that runs on solar and electric power. Their creations are put to the test during five on-the-water competitive trials.

It was the third time Team Tarka has entered the event and they were delighted to take a silver medal in the sprint event. They also won the top award for their outstanding electrical system design and received special recognition as a team for their perseverance.

The team were the first-ever UK entrant in 2009 and since then they have been in the top 10 three times.

Team Tarka Director Dr Peter Wilson said: “It was a super team effort. The award for outstanding electrical system design demonstrates the excellence of the work done by our electronics students and postgraduates.

“This is an excellent way for engineering students to learn new skills and how to deliver excellence under difficult conditions.â€?

The project involves staff and students from across ECS and is pivotal to their research into the development of renewable energy systems. They were also supported by Roberts’ Fund money to help develop postgraduate students’ enterprise skills.

ECS researchers are developing a smartphone app that will be able to help conservationists discover if a highly endangered insect has become extinct or not.

The New Forest cicada (Cicadetta Montana) is native to Britain but has not been spotted or heard from for more than a decade.

But Dr Alex Rogers, from the Agents, Interaction and Complexity research group, is hoping the new software he and his team are developing can help in the scientific hunt for the insect.

“The cicada has a distinctive high-pitched song that is on the very upper limit of an adult’s hearing range. It is so high pitched that you are never quite sure you are hearing it but the average smartphone is quite capable of picking up such frequencies,â€? said Alex.

Visitors to the New Forest will be able to download the app, turning their mobile into a portable cicada detector. They will then be able to use their phones to scour the area in search of the elusive creatures.

“If a potential song is detected the app gives immediate feedback that it thinks a cicada has been heard. It will then ask permission to upload the recording to a server so it can be analysed in more detail. We’d then contact them off-line and investigate the sighting, revisiting the site to get more recordings,â€? added Alex.

The app could also be used to detect a number of other insect species such as Roesel’s bush crickets, wood crickets and the common grasshopper, and Davide Zilli, a PhD student in the team, is currently working on automatic ways to detect and classify these different insects.

He said: “We also want users to report back to us that they have visited specific sites and heard nothing, so that we can build maps of areas that have been explored, and encourage others to investigate less well explored areas.â€?

Jan Sykulski, a Professor of Applied Electromagnetics in ECS, has been awarded an honorary degree by a French university.

Jan has been a Visiting Professor at l’Unniversite d’Artois, in Arras, for the past eight years and his work has been recognised with the bestowing of the degree of doctor honoris causa.

The award is one of only two honorary degrees being made as part of the University’s 20th anniversary celebrations.

“I am thrilled and proud to receive this award. It is not every day that you receive a letter from the rector of a foreign university with such news and it is a mark of recognition and a source of inspiration,â€? said Jan.

“I have been a Visiting Professor at the University since 2004 and have collaborated in research and given lectures twice a year to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as research seminars to staff,â€? he added.

Jan was given the honorary degree at a special ceremony at the University in November.

Jan came to the University of Southampton in 1980 as a British Council Research Fellow. Since then he has been a lecturer and also held the prestigious post of Chair in Distribution Engineering supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

His research specialises in the development of fundamental methods of computational electromagnetic, power applications of high temperature superconductivity, simulation of coupled field systems, and the design and optimisation of electromechanical devices.

He is founding Secretary of the International Compumag Society, a Visiting Professor at universities in Canada, France, Italy, Poland and China, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the British Computer Society, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA) and has been awarded the honorary title of Professor by the President of Poland.

Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has launched a new, unique, multi-disciplinary Web Science undergraduate degree that is the first of its kind in the UK.

The BSc in Web Science is a pioneering course run by ECS and Social Sciences and aims to provide students with a thorough understanding of the technical underpinnings of the Web as well as the social processes that have shaped its evolution and its impact on society.

Students can choose to follow one of two pathways – Web Science (Social Sciences) or Web Science (Computer Science). They will take a shared core curriculum as well as specialist modules in their chosen pathway.

The three-year degree is based on world-leading research and postgraduate education and adds to Southampton’s role as a key player in the future development of the Web and Web Science.

ECS already offers Web Science at postgraduate and research level; is home to the Web Science Doctoral Training Centre; and has created the Web and Internet Science Research Group (WAIS) that is carrying out research to better understand the origin, evolution and growth of the Web and how it is transforming society.

Many of ECS’ academics were involved in developing the Web including Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt. All are very influential and key players in the continued research and development of the Web and Web Science.

Dr Mark Weal, from ECS, said: “The Web is transforming the world in ways that could never be imagined. Only by understanding the Web will we be in a position to positively impact on its continued evolution.â€?

Professor Susan Halford, from Social Sciences, added: “The Web is the largest human information infrastructure in history. Our unique course will help you understand how it works and how it is changing and shaping the everyday lives of billions of people across the planet from their business and social lives to political organisation.â€?

The BSc in Web Science will start from October 2013. For further information go to www.webscience.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has launched a new degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE).

ECS has long experience in teaching excellent electrical engineering and electronic engineering programmes and is now launching this central unifying degree in EEE.

Students will get the opportunity to study many of the technologies that are key to the 21st Century requirements of energy efficient power transmission, smart grids, mobile phone electronics, communications, robotics, power electronics, and energy aware electronics and computing.

They will gain a broad spectrum of knowledge and skills that will allow them to work in a wide range of industry sectors.

The BEng and MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering will start in 2013. Subject to approval, the first two years of the MEng progamme will also be available at the University of Southampton’s new Malaysia Campus.

Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, said: “In ECS our interests and research span the whole range of EEE from nano-scale devices up to grid level high voltage engineering. The breadth and scale of activity is unique in the UK. We have a long history and in-depth knowledge across the spectrum of electronic and electrical engineering and are delighted to be integrating them to offer students a combined subject for the very first time.

“Our students will be able to investigate the whole area of electronics and electrical engineering from the electronics and chip design behind smartphones to the energy requirements of power transmission.â€?

To find out more about the EEE degree in Southampton go to www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/undergraduate/find_a_programme

To find out more about our Malaysia Campus go to www.southampton.ac.uk/my

ECS is holding an Alumni Reception in Southampton next week (Wednesday 21 November), which brings together alumni from the city and region, as well as members of the ECS Business and Careers Networks.

Following the successful Alumni Reception held in London earlier this year, ECS is holding a Reception at the University's Highfield Campus from 6 pm to 8 pm on Wednesday 21 November. This event is aimed principally at alumni who live in Southampton and surrounding counties, but all members of the ECS Alumni community are welcome to attend. For further information contact alumni@soton.ac.uk or email Joyce Lewis.

This is an informal networking event which also includes key contacts from the ECS Careers and Business Networks. Staff and student alumni from ECS will also be present, including PhD students from the Doctoral Training Centres in Web Science and Complex Systems Simulation, who will exhibit posters, entrepreneurial students from ECS, including Don Ndiweni who runs Urban Expert, and two new activities will be launched: our new consultancy service, Complexity Solutions, based in the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation, and the Electronic Design Initiative. Members of DevECS, a development activity led by ECS undergradate students, will also be at the event.

The event runs in the Garden Court area of the Staff Social Centre from 6 pm to 8 pm and all alumni are welcome to be there.

University of Southampton in the UK and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany come together to launch SoFWIRed, a new collaborative venture in Web and Internet Science.

Two of the world’s leading institutions at the forefront of Web and Internet Science have announced a major collaborative project, which will help shape the future of the World Wide Web and associated smart services and technologies.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft will set the agenda of the digital age for decades through a series of activities that will lead to the development of comprehensive, interoperable platforms for data and knowledge-driven processing of open data. The project will also investigate aspects of collective intelligence through social collaboration and crowd sourcing, dynamic web objects and internet services.

One of the principal aims of the collaboration will be to develop the concept of a ‘Web Observatory’ to enable researchers to share data about how the Web and society evolve over time, analyse how it impacts on business activity and develop mechanisms and tools to enable further interpretation and analysis.

The project will be headed by Southampton’s Dean of Physical and Applied Sciences, Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Professor Nigel Shadbolt from University of Southampton and the two ITC Fraunhofer Institutes for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS (Sankt Augustin) and for Open Communication Systems FOKUS (Berlin).

Southampton is renowned for making the breakthrough in developing the low-loss optical fibres which now ‘drive’ the internet and continues to lead applied research into the power of the information that the Web holds and the ways it continues to transform our lives.

Fraunhofer is Europe’s largest application oriented research organisation whose research has formed the basis of a wide range of technologies for industry and products in everyday use, such as the MP3 player and apps for mobile phones.

“The World Wide Web has had profound effects on society with each emerging wave creating both new challenges and new opportunities available to wider sectors of the population than ever before,â€? says Professor Dame Wendy Hall. “Working in unison, the University of Southampton and Fraunhofer are perfectly poised to make the breakthroughs that will produce the enabling technologies of the future as well as our understanding of how best to exploit these technologies for the benefit of all in society.â€?

Professor Dr. Ulrich Buller, Senior Vice President Research Planning of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and Director of Fraunhofer UK Research Limited, says: “It is foreseen that the cooperation between University of Southampton as the world leading institution in the field of web and internet research and the two Fraunhofer-Institutes IAIS and FOKUS as extensive experts in development of intelligent information and communication systems would open new dimensions in the area of ICT at large.â€?