Dr Basel Halak has been awarded a National Teaching Fellowship on the 20th anniversary of the scheme
Outstanding Electronic and Electrical Engineering teaching at the University of Southampton has been recognised with a prestigious UK National Teaching Fellowship.
Principal Teaching Fellow Dr Basel Halak was celebrated for his development and delivery of courses on secure embedded systems at the 2020 Teaching Excellence Awards for Higher Education.
Basel has focused on building an inclusive learning environment for students from all backgrounds, while devising new learning resources and pedagogic approaches to keep up with fast-paced developments in the field of electronics engineering.
National Teaching Fellowships, organised and managed by Advance HE, recognise individuals who have made an outstanding impact on student outcomes and the teaching profession in higher education.
Basel is the director of the Internet of Things (IoT) and European Masters in Embedded Computing Systems programmes at Southampton, a visiting scholar at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, a visiting professor at the Kazakh-British Technical University, an Industrial Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
The national fellowship follows his success in 2016 of winning a Vice-Chancellor's Teaching Award.
Electronics and technology play a vital role in tackling society’s biggest challenges, but at the moment, not enough young people have the opportunity to experience these subjects in an engaging way, or consider what career opportunities they could lead to.
Electronics and technology play a vital role in tackling society’s biggest challenges, but at the moment, not enough young people have the opportunity to experience these subjects in an engaging way, or consider what career opportunities they could lead to.
Published: 30 July 2020
Safety masks and respirators rely on a good seal against the face.
Computer vision experts at the University of Southampton have proposed using camera sensors to generate a 3D model of the face in a quick and efficient facemask fitting system.
A research team led by Electronics and Computer Science's Dr Hansung Kim are developing a prototype that virtually fits masks to faces to ensure an adequate seal for wearers such as frontline healthcare workers.
The project is one of a number of innovative activities across south coast universities that have been funded by the Wessex Academic Health Science Centre to address the wide-ranging challenges of COVID-19.
Surgical masks are designed to prevent external splashes but poor fitting can still allow contaminated air to pass through gaps and into the lungs.
Current fit tests spray a flavoured mist over the wearer within a hood, with the tester tasting the spray if the mask is not suitably shaped and leaks. Most tests take between 15 and 20 minutes, with any negative results needing to then be retested on another day.
The method results in many respirators being disposed and wasted, with recent studies finding that several mask models fail fit tests for between 20% and 60% of people.
The new Southampton approach would hugely speed up the process, optimise user protection, reduce the number of trained people needed to lead the tests - freeing up clinical staff - and save precious resources such as respirators, sprays and cleaning solutions.
Hansung, an Associate Professor in the Vision, Learning and Control Research Group, says: “Generating 3D human face models from captured images can virtually fit masks to faces to choose the best mask for individual users. However, current 3D laser scanners are bulky and expensive, while cheaper sensors such as mobile phone cameras have been shown to have high construction errors.
"We propose a system that utilises two small and low-cost colour and depth cameras to provide accurate depth as well as colour. The set up time would be less than five minutes to generate 3D face models in real-time, with the user able to test multiple face models with various facial expressions. Our software would then automatically find the best fitting mask by calculating mesh-fitting errors between the 3D face and mask models."
The Southampton team aims in time to build the system as a single package that can be used without any setup or calibration.
Following the initial prototype, Hansung is interested in exploring collaboration and partnership opportunities with business and industry to further the concept of customised facial mask production and modified PPE based upon human face models.
Ruby Wax was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Southampton last year.
University of Southampton Chancellor Ruby Wax has highlighted the impact of Web technologies in keeping people together during the global pandemic at the ACM Web Science Conference (#WebSci20).
Speaking to Electronics and Computer Science’s Professor Dame Wendy Hall at the international conference, the actor, writer and mental health campaigner discussed how web scientists could enable more online support for people with mental health problems.
More than 270 people from around the world gathered this month to explore new directions in the Web and artificial intelligence (AI).
Conference hosts - Southampton's Web Science Institute (WSI) - had to rapidly transform the event from a physical conference to a virtual conference due to the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the online event proved even more popular with world leaders in Web Science research, technology, industry and policy-making, coming together with Web Science students, to take part in keynote speeches, presentations of new research, panel debates and a PhD symposium.
The conference was launched by ACM President Gabriele Kotsis, followed by WSI Executive Director Professor Dame Wendy Hall 'In Conversation' with Ruby Wax. The pair explored the potential impact of the pandemic on mental health and how technology such as the Web could help bring people together in these uncertain times.
Ruby is the founder of the Frazzled Cafes charity which has been hosting peer support meetings online since lockdown.
Talking about the important role technology has played during the pandemic, Ruby said: "I had always thought that the passing of the bonding chemical oxytocin could only happen in person. I was really wrong, as I have never felt this kind of connection before. Now we are using this technology for the good, in an unbelievable way, which is crossing different ethnicities and ages."
Wendy added: "At the moment there are no barriers to talking to people around the world on this technology, we have the potential for global reach. Our Web Science research is about how people and technology work together, and that is one of the issues we have discussed at the conference - how people react to technology from a mental health perspective.
"As Web Scientists we are beholden to help, and I would like to work with Ruby in the future to benefit the Frazzled Cafes. My plea to the research community is to look at how our lives online are changing and what life is going to be like post-COVID-19."
Throughout the five-day event, delegates from as far afield as Africa and Australia participated in panel debates and paper sessions exploring the future of the Web, particularly in the age of COVID-19.
One of the highlights of the week was the reformation of the Web Science Research Initiative founders - an initiative that was set up in 2006 between Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Southampton to coordinate and support the study of the World Wide Web. Former members, including Wendy, Southampton Visiting Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt and WSI Honorary Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee recalled their memories of that exciting time.
Summing up the conference, Wendy said: "The conference was a great success and because it was online it enabled more speakers and delegates to be able to access it. I strongly believe that is the way forward for future conferences."
The Southampton collaboration used advanced research facilities in the Mountbatten cleanroom complex.
Sustainable Electronic Technologies experts from the University of Southampton have demonstrated a new plasma patterning technique that can create high-quality nanostructured surfaces for infrared thermal control coatings and nonlinear optics.
The research was carried out through a close collaboration between physicists and researchers in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).
Metasurfaces are man-made structures designed to control light and other forms of radiation using very small elements, typically with sub-micrometer dimensions.
Conventional methods of producing the advanced material coatings in specialist cleanroom facilities such as the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre etch patterns into materials or deposit separated structures on the surface by a process called lift-off lithography. However, the resulting surface topography is often undesirable and can strongly limit the device performance when embedded into a stack of many independent layers.
In their study, the researchers explored a completely new technology that locally and selectively modulates optical properties without changing the flatness of the material surface. The research team based their new technique on the discovery that an oxygen plasma can greatly reduce the electron concentration of certain metal oxides, which hold unique properties for integrated circuits, solar cells, chemical sensing and catalysis.
The plasma patterning technique has been demonstrated by fabricating two novel devices, a planar metasurface-based optical solar reflector for satellite radiant cooling and a multiband metasurface with different operation ranges.
Professor Kees de Groot, Head of the Sustainable Electronic Technologies group, says: "The ability to precisely control the local density of electrons in semiconductors is very fundamental and forms the basis of modern nanoelectronic circuits. The fact that we can do this now for other materials such as metal oxides could be a game-changer with much wider impact on both electronic and photonic technologies.
"The collaboration between physics and ECS over the years has been very fruitful in bringing together complementary skills in materials and optical analysis, and this result highlights the importance of such multidisciplinary science, which is a particular strength in Southampton."
Transparent conductive oxides such as aluminium-doped zinc oxide (Al:ZnO) have a high electron density, making it dielectric in visible range but metallic in infrared (IR) range. This electron density of Al:ZnO is critical for its material electrical and optical properties. To achieve an optical property contrast, which is required for optical metasurface formations, parts of the Al:ZnO film need to be removed, leaving a non-planar structure.
The study found that oxygen plasma can reduce Al:ZnO electron density by up to five orders of magnitude. This led the team to propose the new fabrication technique that forms a metasurface by selectively modulating the electron density using oxygen plasma, made possible by accurate location control through a lithography definition.
The fabricated device achieves its metasurface function for its optical property contrast but maintains a planar topological surface profile. This metasurface is highly desirable for its compatibility with any added functional layers.
Southampton scientists have applied to file the plasma patterning technique as a UK patent. Research was funded by the Dstl MultiMeta project, which has currently entered its second phase of development.