University of Southampton alumnus Dr Feng Gao has been praised for international leadership in open data at the British Council's Study UK Alumni Awards 2019-20 in Beijing.

Feng has co-founded and directed China's first social enterprise addressing the issue of transparent and open data flow in the five years since completing a PhD in Computer Science at Southampton.

The Open Data China challenge model has led to the release of more than 60 data resources from more than 30 government agencies and enterprises, generating more than 1,000 products, prototypes and entrepreneurial teams with a total value of more than 100 million yuan.

Feng was named the winner of the Professional Achievement Award at last month's ceremony in the Chinese capital, joining previous winners who have distinguished themselves through exemplary leadership in their professional field.

I am honoured to be recognised by the British Council and feel rewarded and motivated to continue what I'm doing, Feng says. My time spent in Southampton was unforgettable and equipped me with the academic skills and attitude to succeed in life. I highly appreciate the fact that Southampton is one of the UK's leading institutes for open data and this led me to work on the issue once I returned to China.

China is facing new opportunities and challenges in embracing the digital economy and one of the contributions Open Data China is looking to make is to help design better data policy and interventions that build an ecosystem to support this exciting agenda.

Feng explored people's food beliefs to design health eating applications during his PhD with Professor m.c. schraefel in Electronics and Computer Sciences Agents, Interaction and Complexity Research Group.

His subsequent publications and talks on open data have been featured globally by media and at conferences. In 2019, he was also named a Yale World Fellow and won China's first 30 New Generation Digital Economy Talents award.

Now in its sixth year, the British Council's Study UK Alumni Awards 2019-20 recognised nine UK alumni in China for excellence as business professionals, entrepreneurs and community leaders.

Matt Burney, Country Director at the British Council in China, said: The Alumni Awards allow us to come together to celebrate to the role international students play in making the UK one of the most diverse, dynamic and rewarding higher education destinations for international study. It also allows us to recognise the achievements and contributions of alumni from China and the world have made to their communities.

A team of Malaysian PhD students has won a global engineering challenge with a sustainable approach to packing dried food products.

The engineers from the University of Southampton Malaysia, University of Malaya and Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) have developed a prototype for dissolvable food blocks that would significantly reduce the amount of single-use plastic supermarket packaging.

Team NanoMalaysia was named the Greenpeace scenario winner of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Global Challenge 2018/19 at this winters IET Innovation Awards in London.

The students' solution, which is made of carrageenan and starch, provides an alternative to plastic packaging for dried, loose foods by protecting the food product until they are boiled in hot water. A clear layer of starch holds the food in place, while the carrageenan a natural ingredient that comes from red seaweed prevents moisture from getting in.

Southampton's Ivan Ling, Project Lead, says: "We are extremely honoured to be chosen as the winner of this prestigious award. One of the recent issues raised by the Malaysian Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change is the dumping of plastic waste and this got us thinking how we could play a role to help solve this. We plan to develop the PICAS block further and hope to have it commercialised in the near future."

The current PICAS block prototype is used to package beans. The team will now expand their scope to test other dried food products that need to be washed and cooked before consumption, including pasta and grains.

Ivan worked for nine months with Malaya's Pauline Phoon Bao Lee and Tan Chin Joo, together with UTP's Ong Chong Cheen, to develop the dissolvable block.

The IET Global Challenge tasked young entrepreneurs to develop innovative solutions that can help clean up the estimated 18 billion pounds of increasing plastic waste that enters our oceans every year.

The challenge provided two scenarios partnered with Greenpeace and the GreenSeas Trust. Team Baywatchers from Oxfordshire won this year's GreenSeas Trust scenario with a concept for a crab-like robot that could collect cigarette butts from UK beaches.

The University of Southampton Malaysia was established in 2012 and offers world-class engineering programmes which include the Engineering Foundation Year and undergraduate MEng programmes in Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The University offers a unique student experience, students spend their first two years in Malaysia and their final two years in the UK.

Researchers from the University of Southampton have unveiled a web-based solution for IT security compliance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2020.

SPYDERISK, a spinout company from Southampton's IT Innovation Centre, launched its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering today as part of the only UK university exhibit at the world-renowned technology showcase in Las Vegas.

The founders are connecting with early adopters this week on the University's Future Worlds accelerator stand in Eureka Park.

With the average cost of a data breach in the US at USD8m in 2019, the danger of cyber-attacks is increasingly driving companies to obtain compliance certification such as SOC-2 and ISO 27001 and also demand them from their supply chain.

In contrast to other solutions, SPYDERISK automates much of the risk assessment process mandated by SOC-2 and ISO 27001: finding all the threats in a system by following the web of attack paths and considering how one threat can lead to another.

The software calculates risk based on the threat likelihood and business impact, and proposes mitigations drawn from a detailed knowledgebase before generating the reports needed for compliance certification.

Dr Stephen Phillips, Southampton Principal Research Engineer and SPYDERISK founder, says: “This ground-breaking product is a game-changer for enterprises, dramatically reducing the time and cost to understand and manage security threats, to ensure better protection and compliance certification.”

Professor Mike Surridge, Head of Research, says: “I am delighted that seven years of detailed research on modelling risk has produced such a valuable commercial product, and in doing so provides an important defence against the prevalent threats to IT security that face the world today.”

CES 2020 will include over 4,500 exhibiting companies and attract more than 180,000 attendees wanting to see the next generation of consumer technologies.

Graham Stuart MP, Minister for Investment, says: “We are facing increasing global cybersecurity threats and SPYDERISK’s solutions highlight the strength of the UK cyber sector and our world-leading university research. The Department for International Trade is proud to support British innovators as they launch at CES to achieve global impact and change the world with their ideas.”

University startups Radii Devices, a cloud-based design assistant for prosthetists, and Aquark Technologies, which develops miniaturised components for quantum technology, are also exhibiting with Future Worlds at CES 2020.

Ben Clark, Future Worlds Director, says: “The Future Worlds stand at CES proudly puts UK university innovation on the world stage. Our students and academics are turning world-leading research into products that change the world. Exhibiting at CES has helped startups and spinouts from the University of Southampton gain hundreds of commercial leads and secure millions of pounds of investment, and we’re excited to see these latest innovations make global impact in 2020.”

Future Worlds is based in Booths 51733 and 51735 in Eureka Park at the Sands Expo. You can follow daily updates from SPYDERISK and other University entrepreneurs on the Future Worlds website.

Professor George Chen from the University of Southampton has become a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) for his contributions in the field of electrical insulation and dielectrics.

The Professor of High Voltage Engineering, who is Head of Southampton's Electrical Power Engineering research group, now holds the highest grade of membership at the world's largest professional association for advancing technology for humanity.

He is the tenth academic in Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton to receive the prestigious honour.

Through its 400,000 plus members in 160 countries, the IEEE is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.

"IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the Institute's fields of interest are deemed fitting of this prestigious grade elevation," George says. "I am really honoured to join this esteemed group from the global community of electrical and electronic engineers."

Less than 0.1 per cent of voting members are selected annually for the member grade elevation, following a rigorous evaluation by the IEEE Fellow Committee.

George has been recognised for his contributions to space charge measurement and interpretation for dielectric performance improvements.

Southampton's Electrical Power Engineering research group, based in Electronics and Computer Science, combines classical electrical engineering with physics, materials science, chemistry, computer science and mathematics.

Its facilities include the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory, a world class centre for research into dielectric materials and insulation systems, as well as high voltage and related phenomena.

Researchers from the University of Southampton have won an Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Award for their work simulating black silicon nanostructures for photovoltaic applications.

Members of the Sustainable Electronic Technologies (SET) research group scooped first prize in the Model Based Engineering category in a ceremony in central London on Wednesday 13th November.

The team, led by Dr Stuart Boden, with PhD student Jack Tyson and Senior Research Fellow Dr Tasmiat Rahman, is part of an investigation supported by the Black Silicon Photovoltaics grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

“We are proud that our work has been recognised by the IET through this prestigious award”, Stuart said. “It was an honour to be shortlisted and we were absolutely thrilled to win first prize in our category; I’d like to thank my team for their excellent efforts.”

The IET Innovation Awards recognise and celebrate the very best new innovations across the breadth of science, engineering and technology. At the ceremony, which was hosted by TV presenter and comedian Alex Brooker, top engineers from industry and academia gathered to celebrate the success of the shortlisted candidates in each category.

The judges praised the innovative approach taken by the Southampton team in using a finite element method together with randomisation algorithms to more accurately predict the spectral distribution of light reflected from nanoscale-textured silicon surfaces. Accurate modelling is essential to improving materials and the research’s applied mathematics will directly enable improvements in solar cell efficiency.

Photovoltaics are the fastest growing renewable energy technology and are expected to account for 30% of global power generation capacity in the coming decades. Silicon photovoltaics account for more than 90% of the market, where significant technological improvements can ensure further price reductions and increased deployment.

The £950,000 Black Silicon Photovoltaics research project has brought together project teams in Southampton and Oxford to draw on close collaborations with institutes at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Germany, and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia. The methods developed as part of the project are being applied to the leading solar cell technologies based on mono- (c-Si) and multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si).

Professor Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southampton has been announced on the 10th annual UKtech50 - a list of the most influential people in the UK tech sector.

The Regius Professor of Computer Science is the only academic to appear on the prestigious list, published by Computer Weekly.

Dame Wendy is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute and was recently announced by the UK government as the first Skills Champion for AI in the UK.

She has also appeared today on BBC iPlayer in a People of Science interview with Professor Brian Cox, discussing the life and discoveries of one of her personal heroes, Alan Turing.

Computer Weekly's annual UKtech50 represents a definitive list of the movers and shakers in UK technology and includes business and industry leaders that are driving the role of technology in the UK economy.

"This list is full of people who I admire hugely and who have done so much to help create such a strong tech sector in the UK," Dame Wendy said. "I'm amazed that I get into such a list, especially being the only academic to do so."

Dame Wendy appeared in a list of 30 "AI gurus" in Europe to follow on Twitter last week on Sifted, a new site for the continent’s innovators and entrepreneurs.

"The UK must continue to build on its strength in the tech sector over the coming decade, particularly in AI, to retain our world leading status in this area," she added. "This means continuing to invest in tech start-ups and helping them grow into companies that can compete on the global stage.

"But it also means continuing to invest in our world leading universities, because this really does give us an edge internationally compared to other countries of a comparable size to the UK."

Dame Wendy spearheaded the launch of the Z21 Innovation Fund in 2017, drawing together funding from the University of Southampton and the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership to capitalise on the potential of emerging University web startups.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 New Year’s Honours list, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.