UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
ELECTRONICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
WEB and INTERNET SCIENCE
Lectureship/Senior Lectureship in the Web and Internet Science Group
Background to the Appointment:
The Web and Internet Science (WAIS) undertakes interdisciplinary research focusing on the science and technology of the Web and Internet. This research is fundamental if we are to secure the social and economic benefits of the Web and Internet, to anticipate their future evolution and foresee the types of threats that might arise to compromise them. The group has pioneered much of the work that led to the creation of Web Science, and its research is wide ranging: it takes a systemsoriented approach which covers the design and engineering as well as the analysis and science, ofboth the technical and social aspects of the Web and Internet.
The work on the Web currently includes research on linked open data, social machines, digital libraries, social networking, e-learning, semantic technologies, life-logging, multimedia search and retrieval. The research on the Internet includes advanced networking, distributed computing, provenance & trust, and data privacy & security. The latter is part of a wider initiative in cyber security, which aims at the safe exploitationof the opportunities that the Internet offers for individuals, businesses, government and institutions.
The post holders will join our established and successful group, one of the largest groups of its kind in the world with 20 faculty members and over 100 researchers and PhD students. The successful candidates will be outstanding scholars in any area of Web Science. They will have a background in a core Web Science research discipline and be able to demonstrate the ability to undertake interdisciplinary research in collaboration across the University, and to contribute to the development of the new Web Science undergraduate degree we will be launching in October 2013.
For appointment as Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer, you will demonstrate a substantial external reputation in your field, evidence of independent research leadership and evidence of academic potential through quality research publications.
Salary will be in the range £45,486 to £57,171 for a Senior Lectureship, and£34,895 to £44,166 for a Lectureship position. The closing date is 18May 2012. Interviews for these posts will be heldin July and will also comprise a presentation to the research Group. More information about our teaching programmes and research can be found on our website atwais.ecs.soton.ac.uk. The person and job specification contains a profile of the potential appointee. If you would value an informal preliminary discussion, please contact Prof Nigel Shadbolt (tel: +44 (0)238059 7682, email: nrs@ecs.soton.ac.uk) or Prof Vladimiro Sassone (tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9009), email: ).
Electronics and Computer Science (ECS):
WAIS sits within ECS, the UK’s leading academic unit integrating computer science, electronics, and electrical engineering. With around 550 researchers, ECS has unrivalled depth and breadth of expertise in world-leading research, new developments and their applications in hardware, materials, software and the broad computing ecosystem. It offers outstanding education in a world-class research environment. Its 800 undergraduate students are enrolled on 23 differentdegreeprogrammes, all of them providing intensive and challenging courses which prepare students for roles in business and industry, government and commerce, research and development. Many of our students start their own successful companies and entrepreneurship is highly valued and supported within ECS.
ECS dates from 1946, when Professor Eric Zepler founded the Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Radio Engineering. In the 60 years since then, the initial department has been transformed, encompassing Computer Science in 1987, and Electrical Engineering in 1999. However, it has retained a distinctive culture: the computer science research base was and remains firmly grounded in engineering and sound mathematical principles, and at the time of the merger in 1987, the electronics department was already embracing the emerging implications that embedded software would have for the electronics industry. Since then the School has developed in many different directions, but always held firm to the ethos that research will be firmly grounded in theory, but that theory is always informed by practical application.
ECS receives the highest ratings for its research (in 2008 RAE ranked joint second in Computer
Science), is funded by UK government agencies (over £130 million from the EPSRC in 2001-2008), the European Union, and companies and agencies worldwide. It has an acknowledged reputation for enterprise and the establishment of spin-off companies. Its research is carried out in six word-leading research groups: Agents, Interaction, ComplexityGroup (AIC),Communications, SignalProcessingandControlGroup (CSPC), ElectronicandSoftwareSystemsGroup (ESS), ElectronicsandElectricalEngineeringGroup (EEE), NanoGroupandWebandInternetScienceGroup (WAIS). Full information about all our research projects is available on our researchgrouppages. ECS also incorporates two Doctoral Training Centres – in WebScience, and ComplexSystemsSimulation.
Research in WAIS:
The group's current activity can be set against four main research ambitions: to examine the Web and Internet and understand their impact on contemporary society, to explore novel changes that the Web and Internet enable in the way we run our lives, to develop innovative Web and Internet services and enhancements to the way that the Web and Internet operate in the future, and to secure the Web and Internet.
●Examining the Web and Internet: Web observatory; open knowledge; open & linked data; open access; open science; open education; open government data; analytics, metrics, models and tools for the Web and Internet.
●Web & Internet Enhanced Society: social machines; augmented cognition; online behavioural interventions; technology enhanced learning; reading, writing & remembering; hypertext; digital literacy; life logging.
●Enhanced Web and Internet: Semantic Web; social networks; pervasive internet; sensor Web; next-generation Internet; accessibility; user experience.
●Securing the Web and Internet:provenance; trust; privacy; identity; security; cybercrime; cybersecurity; intellectual property.
Teaching in WAIS:
Besides contributing to the ECS teaching curricula, WAIS is responsible forspecific degree programmes.The MSc in Web Technology, is an intensive high-level course that covers the current and emerging technologies that are and will be used to support Webbased software systems. The MSc in Web Science, is a multidisciplinary course for the study of Web technologies in the context of economic theory, legal practice, linguistic analysis and sociological evaluation. The Doctoral Training Centre in Web Science, a £6M centre funded by the EPSRC, the University of Southampton, and industry, hosts 80 fully funded PhD studentships (UK/EU students) over 5 years starting in October 2009.
There are plans to extend our teaching offering to include postgraduate courses in Open Data Technology and also to inaugurate an undergraduate degree in Web Science in October 2013.
Organisation of WAIS:
The group comprises 20 faculty members and over 100 researchers and PhD student, lead by Head of Group, Professor Nigel Shadbolt. It has three Deputy Heads of Group Professors Vladimiro Sassone, Hugh Davies and Luc Moreau. The group is managed through regular strategic and plenary meetings, and runs a regular series of seminars as well as a more informal forum for student’s seminars and debates. WAIS is fully represented in the decision structure of ECS and the University; currently, the Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences and the Deputy Head Research of ECS are members of WAIS. The group receives over 60 PhD applications per year, which are scrutinised by group members according to their research interests. Successful applications areprioritised by the Head of Group for the funding made available yearly by ECS.
Main research projects in WAIS:
●Coarsegeometryandcohomologyoflargedatasets
●EnAKTinG the unbounded Web of Data
●EPrints: OpenRepositorySoftware
●InStep - partoftheIn-foliocollection.
●LExDis - Disabledlearners’ experiencesofe-learning
●LifeCIT
●MyDocStore
●NeuroHub
●ORCHID: Human-AgentCollectives - FromFoundationstoApplications
●PATINA: PersonalArchitectonicsThroughInteractionswithArtifacts
●ProvenanceWorkingGroup
●REALISE : REfiningAndLearningfromon-linetoolsforInternetSharedEnterprise
●RedFeather
●RobertsEnterpriseScheme - PostgraduatetrainingforAccessibilityandAssistiveTechnology
●SOWN: TheSouthamptonOpenWirelessNetwork
●Sensornetworksforglaciers: Glacsweb
●StudentCentrednessProjects
●SynoteMobile
●TheDevelopmentofaSoftwareComponentLibrarytoSupporttheRapidAssemblyofGeo-CentredLinkedDataApplications
●UBHave
●WebScienceDoctoralTrainingCentre
●Web2Access
●e-Stat
●SOCIAM- The Theory and Practice of Social machines
Exemplar WAIS Initiatives Current and Planned:
EPrints: ECS has played a leading role in the worldwide drive towards Open Access to academic research. This movement was instigated in the early 1990s by ECS Professor Stevan Harnad. ECS was the first academic institution in the world to adopt a self-archiving mandate (2001) and since then all its published research has been freely available on the Web. It created the first and most widely used archiving software (EPrints) which is used worldwide by leading archives and continues to be evolved and supported from ECS.
TheITInnovationCentre:The IT Innovation Centre is an applied research centre advancing a wide range of information technologies and their deployment in industry and commerce. IT Innovation is part of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science, and is based at the University of Southampton Science Park. IT Innovation researches, develops, architects, engineers and integrates innovative IT systems. Applying new technologies from the research community to problems in industry and commerce, we deliver research reports, white papers, proofs-of-concept, demonstrators and novel operational systems.
The Open Data InstituteThe vision is to establish the Open Data Institute (ODI) as a world-leading centre to innovate, exploit and research the opportunities for the UK created by the Government’s Open Data (OD) policy.Co-directed by Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt and involving business, public sector and academic institutions the ODI will be based in Shoreditch in East London. Southampton and the WAIS Group will play a key role in delivering services and research to the ODO
The first of its kind the ODI will demonstrate the commercial value of Open Government Data (OGD) and the impact of OD policies on the realisation of this value. It will also develop the capability of UK businesses to exploit this value, with support from University researchers. It will help the public sector use its own data more effectively. It will engage with developers, the private and public sector to build supply chains and commercial outlets for public data. It will foster and train a generation of OD entrepreneurs. It will help secure and commission the required research in underpinning OD technologies.