Business and Busy-ness – six weeks in the life of ECS

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February and March 2015 have set new records for company engagement in ECS!  – the Engineering and Technology Careers Fair on 10 February was our biggest and most successful so far, with 85 companies and over 950 students in attendance. It was a great event with a tangible feeling of energy and excitement throughout the day. Since then, over the last six weeks we’ve had a packed programme of company talks, challenges, and competitions. The week after the Fair we were very pleased to host a visit to ECS by Tony King-Smith, Executive VP Marketing for Imagination Technologies. Tony visited a number of research projects, including PRiME (Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded Systems, pictured below) in which Imagination is a major partner, met key staff in ECS, visited our undergraduate labs, and gave an evening lecture about future technology.

Tony King-Smith visit Feb

Imagination also organized a weekend hackathon in partnership with ECS Entrepreneurs, which gave ECS students the opportunity to get hands-on with the recently released MIPS Creator CI20 development board to ‘Hack the car dashboard challenge’. The event was held in ECS electronics labs in Zepler Building, and industry-leader RightWare were also present for the weekend. ECS students devised and built some innovative apps for the dashboard over the weekend, and the winning team (below) all received PURE radios.

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Netcraft organized an event on March, entitled ‘Stealing App Credentials for Fun and Profit’. Around 50 students took part, learning how to find network vulnerabilities in apps used by millions of people. We also had a record number of company talks and presentations, including Bloomberg, Betfair, iPresent, FDM, Fujitsu, ARM, HGF, D Young & Co, J P Morgan, Mott McDonald, Cirrus Logic, Imagination Technologies, FactSet and Deloitte. Snowflake Software ran a day-long Saturday Code-Off in our computer labs, with the winning student gaining a summer internship at their Southampton office. BAE Systems Applied Intelligence are again sponsoring the second-year Electronic Engineering D4 Electronic Design exercise. The final ‘trade fair’ day takes place on Friday 20 March, the last day of term, and some excellent innovations in creating ‘walkie-talkie systems’ are expected from the teams. QinetiQ are sponsoring one of our second-year software modules/

ECS distinguished alumnus Mike Payne gave an entrepreneurs masterclass over lunch on Friday 27 February to the ECS Entrepreneurs group. Mike is one of the founders of the renowned CAD tool SolidWorks, only one of the leading companies that he was been involved with during his career. ECS Entrepreneurs also initiated weekly Seedling sessions on Saturdays in the Electronics labs, enabling ECS students to meet and share ideas and to use the lab facilities and equipment for their own inventions. Another distinguished ECS alumnus, Thomas Papakostas, returned to ECS to run the R&D CORE technology application competition, again in association with ECS Entrepreneurs. The competition focused on his company R&D CORE’s revolutionary contact area sensor (DRAS) technology, which aims to revolutionize the next generation of truly flexible smart devices.

All that in only six weeks! But as we approach the end of term, with only a few weeks left of their degree programmes for our students graduating this summer, it’s exciting to hear of their graduate destinations – many of them going to join the companies named above, whose efforts in coming to Southampton to talk about their opportunities are obviously much appreciated and very worthwhile!

For further information on any of our careers-focused activities and events, contact Joyce Lewis.