High-performing students from the University of Southampton have won prizes in two national competitions from the UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF) at the TechWorks Awards.

Third year MEng Electronic Engineering student Hugo McNally was named joint UKESF Scholar of the Year in last week’s ceremony, becoming the sixth Southampton student to win the honour in the past nine years.

MSc Artificial Intelligence student Yanislav Donchev claimed first prize in an inaugural Embedded Systems Competition with an innovative design for sensor-fitted drumsticks and foot pedals that he created during his Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree's individual project. Fellow Southampton student Torran Green took second place with his design for an interactive smart poster using dispenser-printed electronics.

The students were honoured at London's Royal Garden Hotel in a Gala Dinner and Awards hosted by TechWorks, the UK's deep tech hub.

Hugo was presented the Scholar of the Year prize, sponsored by IC Resources, for his work at industry partner ON Semiconductors. He will share the title with Mary Bennett from the University of Surrey.

"I am good friends with many UKESF scholars and hold these friends in the highest regard; they are all intelligent and very driven," Hugo said. "It is an honour to be highlighted as one of the top performers among this crowd.

"My experience on the scheme has been amazing. I have worked at an exciting company with many great people; I have built a network of many other high-achieving and interesting students; and it has pushed me to partake in outreach activities which I have come to really enjoy."

Professor Geoff Merrett, ECS Director of Outreach and Recruitment, said: "Many congratulations to Hugo for this excellent result, acknowledging the contributions that he has made to his sponsoring company and in promoting the electronics sector. Hugo is Southampton's 10th finalist in the nine years that the Scholar of the Year award has been in existence, and this is a continued testament to our consistently high-quality students, and the excellent and longstanding relationship that we have with the UKESF."

The Embedded Systems Competition, supported by UltraSoC, highlights excellence in students completing a major individual project on embedded systems.

Prize winner Yanislav Donchev spent half a year developing his Drumless concept, which embeds MEMS motion sensors interfaced with a microcontroller that connect via Bluetooth and play through a smartphone.

"My project allows drummers to play everywhere and whenever they want," he explained. "They can pack the two drumsticks and the foot sensors in their backpack, their mobile phone in their pocket and that's all they need to play drums.

"The biggest impact this project had on me was the introduction to deep learning. Before this, deep learning was a black box to me. Now it is an area that I am getting better at every day and my aspirations are to become a research scientist in that field."

Fourth year MEng Electronic Engineering student Torran Green showcased research being advanced in the Smart Electronic Materials and Systems research group through his individual project.

His smart poster incorporated printed touchpads, an audio speaker, a proximity sensor, an electroluminescent Lamp and a Near Field Communication (NFC) antenna, all controlled centrally by a microcontroller.

"The project used a variety of different E-Inks, each with specific electrical properties,” he said. “By layering and printing these inks in a particular way different electronic devices can be printed. This project represented the first time that so many different dispenser-printed devices had been successfully incorporated into one system; now that this has been achieved it is easier to envision the potential applications of dispenser printing in the future."

Professor m.c. schraefel will explore models that inspire a broad and sustained uptake of digital health technologies through a prestigious Established Career Fellowship at the University of Southampton.

The five-year fellowship, awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is one of just over 50 of its kind to recognise significant career achievements across the UK academic community. The project was the top ranked proposal from all nationwide entries this autumn in the ESPRC ICT interview panel.

The award also confirms Professor schraefel, a prominent researcher in Computer Science and Human Performance, as an international field leader. She will develop and test approaches for Inbodied Interaction Design that address an EPSRC Grand Challenge to transform community health and care. The £1.58m fellowship will build upon initiatives such as the wellthLab and continue her mission to #makeBetterNormal.

“The new social normal in the UK is to be unhealthy,” m.c. explains. “The latest figures show that 69% of UK adults are overweight to obese, 80% of workers report being stressed and 79% of adults are underslept.

“There's tremendous desire to create digital interventions to fix these issues; to help us become healthier. While some of these technologies are fantastic accomplishments of what counting can do, they are still really brittle. These devices are very much focussed on individuals, which can mean these practices become socially isolating and require a lot of willpower when we just don’t have the resources.

“Health is complex - apps, typically, are not. The quest of this fellowship is to explore how we design interactive technology that supports the building of health resilience.”

The new project will deliver innovation based on Inbodied Interaction, a methodology m.c. has developed that considers the optimal internal working of the body when designing support for human performance.

A research team will develop frameworks and models of the new tools for uptake by groups and businesses, while also engaging with policymakers to encourage health resilience interactive technologies to be deployed across the UK.

“The research over the past decade is clear: the healthier and fitter we are, the happier, the less stressed, the smarter we are,” m.c. says. “I come from a Sports Science context of neurology and kinesiology, where the body is the site of aspiration and enabling performance. Bear Grylls can teach us how to survive, but most of us do that every day. In this work, i want to help people thrive - become thrivalists of our daily lives.”

The Established Career Fellowship follows m.c.’s ground-breaking work in a Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship and Research Chair, as well as the EPSRC-funded ReFresh project and GetAMoveOn network.

Local, national and international project partners connected to the programme include the Association of Colleges, Facebook UK, FoodCloud, IBM, Imperial College London, Ogilvy Group UK, Portsmouth College, Public Health England, Royal College of Art, Southampton Voluntary Services and the University of Bath.

“It’s fantastic to receive this award that recognises the importance of this research agenda in advancing the UK’s aspirations for a healthy, connected, resilient and productive nation,” m.c. says. “I’m honoured that this proposal was ranked first and would like to thank the invaluable support from the University’s Research and Innovation Services that means we can continue to #makeBetterNormal.”