The new Southampton Chapter of RoboGals has been out and about introducing engineering to local school students.
Earlier this month five of the Robogals team took part in a survival-themed activities week with Year 9 students at Oaklands Catholic School and Sixth Form College.
The ECS students (pictured left to right), Yusra Hussain, Emily Barnes, Devangini Patel, Michael Robert, and Simon Kueh, worked with five classes of 30 students at a time, running five hour-long sessions.
âWe explained to the students what engineers do,â said Emily Barnes. âWe were able to show them the NXT robots and how to program them, and then set series of flexible challenges for the students to attempt. By the end of the session, most students had written a basic program that allowed the robots to navigate a small assault course by using basic directional instructions or sensing obstacles, sounds or colours.â
The Southampton Chapter of RoboGals was set up by ECS students earlier this year. The core aim of the organization is to introduce girls to the concept of engineering, and encourage them to consider a future STEM career. Volunteer university students visit schools to present talks and run robotic workshops, conveying what engineers do and the difference they can make in society. Robogals has chapters in Australia, the UK, USA and Japan.
Robogals Southampton Chapter is based at at the University, and is run from the ECS department. âECS has a powerful female presence,â said Yusra Hussain, âand we hope to use this to highlight the importance of women in engineering.â
In a significant boost to the global movement for Open Access to research publications, the University of California has announced the adoption of an Open Access Policy.
Research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of the University of California will in future be available to the public without charge in tandem with their publication in scholarly journals.
The adoption of the policy comes after six years of formal review and revision, but as the largest public research university in the world, receiving around 8 per cent of all research funding in the United States, the scale of the Universityâs commitment to public accessibility of research has been welcomed by campaigners for global Open Access (OA).
The University of California has adopted a âgreenâ open access policy meaning that faculty members make their research available, free for all on the Web.
Professor Stevan Harnad, one of the leading figures in the global OA movement, and Professor in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, commented: âThe adoption of a Green Open Access Mandate by the University of California, one of the biggest universities in the US - actually 10 universities - follows on the heels of the directive by President Obama to the 20 biggest federal research funding councils to mandate Green OA.
âThis is a welcome and timely counterweight to the recent retrograde steps by Research Councils UK toward squandering scarce UK research funds on paying instead for Gold OA publishing. Fortunately, HEFCE's proposed Green OA mandate for eligibility for REF 2020, if adopted, will again put the UK back in the worldwide lead in the OA sweepstakes.â?
The University of California commented: âThe adoption of this policy across the UC system also signals to scholarly publishers that open access, in terms defined by faculty and not by publishers, must be part of any future scholarly publishing system. The faculty remains committed to working with publishers to transform the publishing landscape in ways that are sustainable and beneficial to both the University and the public.â?
ECS designed and adopted the worldâs first Green OA self-archiving mandate for its published research in 2001. Its EPrints software is the worldâs first and most powerful repository software, used in libraries and research institutions around the world.
Global internet outage, a virus outbreak and global warming are just some of the hypothetical disaster scenarios set to be created by an unusual collaboration between researchers at the University of Southampton and newly-appointed Leverhulme artists-in-residence.
The ORCHID programme, based in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University, investigates how human and software agents can effectively work together to collect the best possible information from a disaster environment. The team have been exploring the use of unmanned autonomous systems (UAS) fitted with audio-visual equipment that can improve the response of emergency services and populations to disaster management.
Now the research group has been awarded funding to appoint two new artists-in-residence â Steve Beard and Victoria Halford â who will challenge the researchers to imagine new disaster scenarios that UAS technology may have to respond to.
The money to fund the artistsâ work has been awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, which was established in 1925 under the Will of the First Viscount Leverhulme to provide resources to support scholarships for the purposes of research and education. The Trust provides funding for research projects, fellowships, studentships, bursaries and prizes across all academic disciplines. It aims to support talented individuals as they realise their personal vision in research and professional training.
âWe are delighted to have Steve and Victoria on board to help us expand our outlook with regards to our research into the use of computer-driven UAS in managing disaster environments. By offering a creative perspective and striving to make the previously unknown visible, Steve and Victoria will challenge us to think the unthinkable and explore the effects on our research of many different kinds of alternative futures.
âSome of the scenarios that emerge may go beyond the expected to take in what at the present time appears science-fictional.â?
The team has already considered a range of scenarios â some hypothetical, such as the London 2012 Olympic Games being disrupted by fire or floods, and some real-life situations, such as the Haiti earthquake and the Fukishima nuclear disaster â but is keen to expand on these to help shape awareness of the conditions in which UAS may have to operate.
âSteve and Victoria will provoke us to explore what the future may look like and the likely changes of operating computer-driven UAS within it. By mobilising the imagination of artists, we intend to gain access to novel scenarios that will help future-proof the development of our research,â? said Professor Jennings.
Steve and Victoria have previously worked collaboratively to make art films about accidents. They challenge explanations that emerge from scientific accident investigation with alternative narratives. By merging fact and fiction, with alternative histories and projections into the future they create visually compelling, intellectually rich works of art that have been described as documentary fiction and cine-essay.
At the end of the project the pair will create a film sequence modelling hypothetical disaster management narratives generated by the disaster scenarios. Using an off-the-shelf UAS, the film sequences will be the first example of ORCHIDâs research being disseminated in an unconventional and engaging way.
This visual work will be part of a public event staged by the John Hansard Gallery, based at the University of Southampton, at the end of the artistsâ residency.
Fifty students from over 40 schools around the UK took part in a Computing and Microelectronics course at ECS last week, organized by educational charity The Smallpeice Trust.
The five-day residential course enabled students from Years 11 and 12 to build and programme a substantial autonomous robot. The final day of the course was devoted to a competitive challenge in which the robots had to manoeuvre a testing course, demonstrating their manoeuvrability and âintelligenceâ, as a result of the studentsâ inventiveness in design and programming. The course was sponsored by ARM, and delivered by the Student Robotics team in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), under the direction of David Oakley, ECS Labs Manager.
During the design and build of their robots the students worked in teams in the high-spec undergraduate Electronics and Computer labs at ECS. The students learned about the design, fabrication and testing of devices, circuits, microprocessors and systems, while exploring the exciting and wide-ranging theory and practice of computing and electronic engineering. The course also gave them the opportunity to find out more about life at university and also to improve their skills in team-building, communication, time management, planning and presentations.
Harry Grassom of Maidstone Grammar School commented: âI came on this course because I want to do engineering at university and I liked the idea of constructing and building some kind of device. Building robots has been great fun. Iâve thoroughly enjoyed it.â
Lizzie Speddings from Wallington High School for Girls said that she had found the whole experience valuable: âI learned a lot during the week about teamwork and a lot of technical things about programming and building robots. Itâs been a really great experience.â
âI definitely want to do engineering at university,â she added, âand now Iâll be thinking about whether itâs going to be Electronics or Computing.â
Student Robotics is a student-run organization, based in ECS, which runs an annual challenge for sixth-form students in schools and colleges around the UK. Over a period of six months, led and mentored by engineering students at the University of Southampton, participating teams design, build and test their autonomous robot creations and then put them through their paces in a final challenge held in April each year. Students on the Smallpeice Computing and Microelectronics course had only four days to design and build their robots but they were every bit as inventive and successful as those which are produced over the longer time-frame.
The Student Robotics team was led by Andy Busse, who graduated from ECS with an MEng Electronic Engineering degree in 2012 and now works at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. âThe standard of the students was really excellent,â he said, âand by the end of the week there was no doubt that they had caught the engineering bug! They were thinking about design but also thinking about programming, building robots and electronics as well. Itâs what engineering is all about.â
In Autumn 2013 Electronics and Computer Science will run its first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). This will enable anyone to study online, for free, wherever they are in the world a leading subject from ECS, in conjunction with our partner FutureLearn - part of the Open University.
A MOOC is a free study programme which is designed to be studied online by large numbers of participants. In addition to traditional course materials - online video lectures, reading material, coursework and tests - MOOCs provide interactive forums that help students and tutors build an online community around areas of interest.
The University of Southampton has been busy working with the Centre for Innovation in Technologies and Education (CITE) and other teams across the University to develop our first MOOC which will be delivered on the newly launched FutureLearn platform alongside other Universities and content providers like the British Library and the British Council. These exciting opportunities can be taken as a taster for further study or just to learn more about a subject of interest from a potentially massive international audience.
The aim is to give people access to education without the need for prior subject knowledge, just enthusiasm and a willingness to engage around topic areas that interest them or may help them develop their skills.
Courses will cover a range of topics, each requiring two to three hours of study per week. Participants can either choose to complete the whole programme, or elect to dip into particular topics of interest as and when time allows.
The University plans to launch its first few MOOCs in leading subject areas including a major archaeological dig and an emerging Computer Science discipline we are pioneering in ECS, drawing on our world-leading expertise in the field.
If you would like to know more about our MOOCs, FutureLearn and what course we will be launching first, register your interest and select the option "Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths".
What a year it has been so far. The first half of 2013 has been a huge success for Electronics and Computer Science with national and international recognition for our academics and our research.
Honorary degrees, Queenâs birthday honours, Academy awards and substantial funding allocations show that across the board we are leading the field in Electronics and Computer Science.
Among the notable achievements of 2013 so far are:
Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering Professor Dame Wendy Hall has been recognised for her contribution to computing and information technology in a number of ways.
She has received an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Sussex for her work in multimedia and hypermedia and the influence of her work on the development of the Semantic web.
She has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from City University London for helping to transform the boundaries and capabilities of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Back in February Dame Wendy was named on BBC Radio 4 Womanâs Hour Power List that celebrates the achievements of British women across public life. She was selected by a judging panel as one of the women who have the biggest impact in society and also have the ability to inspire change as a role model or thinker.
ECS colleague Professor Nigel Shadbolt, one of the worldâs leading experts in Web Science and the pioneering co-founder of the Open Data Institute (ODI), was knighted in the Queenâs Birthday Honours List for services to science and engineering.
Nigel is Head of the Web and Internet Science Group at the University of Southampton and ODI Chairman, and one of the co-creators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science.
Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Associate Dean Research in Physical Sciences and Engineering, was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for his contribution to low-power design and testing of mobile computing systems. Fellows of the Academy comprise the countryâs most eminent and distinguished engineers and are recognised for their excellence in the science, art and practice of engineering.
Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a leading academic in Web and Internet Science, was one of five joint winners of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering earlier this year.
The prize, given by The Royal Academy of Engineering, honours Sir Tim for inventing the World Wide Web and is awarded in recognition of outstanding advances in engineering that have changed the world and benefited humanity.
The worldâs first electricity monitoring clamp designed by ECS engineers was named as joint winner of this yearâs Royal Academy of Engineering ERA Foundation Entrepreneurs Award.
The device was developed by Dr Reuben Wilcock, Senior Enterprise Fellow and PhD student Robert Rudolf and could enable us to find out which parts of our homes are the most energy-hungry without installing plug-in power monitors on each individual appliance.
The award, that identifies entrepreneurial researchers in UK universities working in electro-technology and at an early stage of their careers, means the pair now have the opportunity to take their multi-core current clamp to market.
ECS recorded outstanding results in one of the UKâs leading university league tables.
In the Guardian University Guide 2014, published in June, the University of Southampton led the table for Electronics and Electrical Engineering, and was ranked in the top five for Computer Science and IT.
At the start of the year the University of Southampton was awarded a rare professorship, bestowed by The Queen, to mark its excellence in the field of Computer Science.
Southampton is one of a handful of universities to receive the prestigious title Regius Professor which reflects the institutionâs exceptionally high quality of teaching and research.
ECS has been recognised for its work tackling the problem of gender inequality in science with an Athena SWAN Bronze Award.
The Athena SWAN Charter was set up in 2005 and acknowledges the commitment of the higher education sector to address gender inequalities, tackle the unequal representation of women in science and to improve career progression for female academics.
ECS joins other University departments including Chemistry, Medicine and Ocean and Earth Science to receive the bronze award this year. The University of Southampton has received the Athena SWAN Bronze Award since 2006.
ECS researchers are part of an interdisciplinary research collaboration that has been awarded a £12m grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop a 24/7 digital home health assistant.
The University of Southampton joins the University of Reading, Bristol City Council, IBM, Toshiba and Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), in the Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE) project that will be led by the University of Bristol.
As part of this five-year project the ECS team from the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Group will be exploring ways in which energy can be supplied to body worn devices without the need for batteries.
ECS will play a key role in a national collaboration of electronic engineers and computer scientists aiming to develop the next generation of energy-efficient computing systems.
Associate Dean Research Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi is Director of PRiME: Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems, that brings together four world-leading research groups from the Universities of Southampton, Imperial College, Manchester and Newcastle. The five-year £5.6m Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded project will undertake creative research into the design and implementation of energy-efficient and dependable embedded systems with many-core processors.
New students to the University of Southampton will be the first to easily find their way around their new city thanks to a new system based on technology pioneered by Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).
The Live Bus Timetable system available to everyone in the city shows users the location of any landmark, food outlet, pub or bus stop across the city and tells them the buses to use.
All they need to do is type in the name of their required destination and, if they are using a computer the campus they are on (mobile phones use GPS to establish current location) and the service will show them the best way to get there.
The system has been developed by the Universityâs Open Data Service and the work has been spearheaded by Dr Ash Smith, a former ECS Research Fellow who now works for the Universityâs central IT service.
âThe new system has been created using the novel feature of combining information from two different open council datasets â the food hygiene ratings and bus timetable data â together with dbpedia.org, the open data equivalent of Wikipedia. This Live Bus Timetable system is a handy service, especially for freshers, to find the buses they need to catch to where they want to go. It is very simple to use and draws a map of their nearest stop in relation to their current position, as well as giving them a list of all the stops on their route,â? said Ash.
âBy combining these sources of open data we have used it in ways it wasnât initially intended, and have opened up the doors to using open data for a whole range of new applications,â? he added.
Ash completed his PhD at Southampton and is an honorary member of the Web and Internet Science Research Group, based in ECS.
The second international Summerhack event of 2013 took place in Timisoara, Romania, at the end of last month.
StartUp weekends are popular events in ECS and this summer our students have helped bring them to other parts of Europe!
Organized by ECS undergraduate student Vlad Velici, with the support of an impressive group of judges, and ECS students Alejandro Saucedo and Izidor Flajsman, who acted as Mentors, the Summerhacks Timisoara event attracted 20 participants who spent the weekend devising start-ups and coding their apps. Unlike other hack events, Summerhacks wasn't a regular 48-hour hackathon â the emphasis was more on excellent projects rather than 'monetizability'. Competitors were able to hack anything they wanted (as long as it was awesome!) And also unlike most hackathons, the final pitch was not conclusive, since judging criteria was focused on the implementation and technical side of the project â the products/projects were actually tested to see if they worked!
Sabin Marcu, one of the members of the winning team, will be joining ECS this month as an undergraduate student in Computer Science.
ECS students are supported in these endeavours by the ECS Student Development Fund, provided by the generosity of ECS alumni.
This was the second ECS-supported event of the summer - in July another successful ECS-sponsored Hack event was held in Ljubljana.
The University of Southampton is launching the largest photonics and electronics institute in the UK on Thursday 12 September.
The new Zepler Institute is a unique multidisciplinary research centre that brings together world-leading expertise in photonics, advanced materials, quantum technologies and nanoscience.
The Institute will build on the Universityâs pioneering discoveries in photonics and electronics that form the backbone of todayâs global communications infrastructure.
For decades, researchers at Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre have enabled the development of the physical hardware through fibre optic technology that laid the foundations of the Internet, while researchers in Electronics and Computer Science are leading the way in pioneering the new discipline of Web Science to understand and develop the future uses of the World Wide Web.
The Zepler Institute will build on that reputation to provide a collaborative environment for research that will continue to deliver the solutions required to meet the global challenges of the future â from ultra-high bandwidth communication technologies, through bio-photonics for point-of-care diagnostics, to fundamental research into quantum devices and technologies, led by experts in the University's Physics, Quantum Light and Matter group.
The Zepler Institute is led by Professor Sir David Payne, Director of the Universityâs internationally renowned Optoelectronics Research Centre, and one of the worldâs most referenced and influential researchers.
Professor Payne will deliver a special lecture entitled â50 Years of Photonics at the University of Southamptonâ to mark the occasion and in celebration of his recently-awarded Knighthood for services to photonics.
The event will also feature a special guest lecture by Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, who is considered one of the âfathersâ of the Internet. Vint will be introduced by web pioneer Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Dean of Physical and Applied Sciences at the University of Southampton.
Professor Hall says: âThe formation of the Zepler Institute ensures that University of Southampton continues to make pioneering breakthroughs and discoveries that will meet societyâs global communication challenges. It also puts us in a leading position to develop the future of the Internet, which is the infrastructure for the World Wide Web."
âFor 60 years Southampton researchers have been at the forefront of the global revolution in digital communications leading the world in web and Internet science, technology and application,â? Professor Hall continues.
In fact, global access to the Internet itself relies almost entirely on Professor Payneâs invention of erbium-doped fibre amplifiers, which has made possible the worldwide information superhighway and high-speed telecommunication networks we often take for granted and which are so important to us all in the 21st century. Every time you use the Internet, your mobile phone or an ATM you are using technology developed at Southampton.
The Zepler Institute is named after Professor Eric Ernest Zepler who founded the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at University College Southampton (now University of Southampton) in 1947, which was the first in Electronics in this country, and probably in the world.
Professor Zepler made an outstanding and pioneering contribution to radio receiver development as well as to the teaching of electronics. From 3pm, researchers from across the Zepler Institute will be showcasing their work and state-of-the-art facilities.
Admission to the showcase and the lectures by Professor Payne and Vint Cerf from 5pm on Thursday, 12 September at the Highfield Campus of the University of Southampton is free though places are limited.
To reserve your place, please register online here or for further information please contact events@soton.ac.uk
An outstanding photograph by Emeritus Professor Greg Parker of Electronics and Computer Science is included in an exhibition of the worldâs best scientific photography, sponsored by the Royal Photographic Society and the Science and Facilities Research Council.
Professor Parkerâs image âWater Drop Collision and Bubble Burst 2012â is one of 100 stunning prints showcasing an extraordinary variety of scientific photography â images that explore worlds we can only imagine, or that are used as tools in everyday life in medicine, engineering and other related fields.
Gregâs image shows a water drop collision occurring underneath a bursting soap bubble âthe first water drop enters the water and throws up a column of water that the second (following) water drop collides with. The picture was also featured in last Saturdayâs edition of 'The Times'.
The inaugural showing of the exhibition âInternational Images for Science 2013â runs at the Great North Museum in Newcastle, as part of the British Science Festival until 29 September.The Exhibition will then tour the UK and overseas. The Exhibition was instigated in 2011, to fulfil The Society's remit 'to promote the Art and Science of Photography'.
