Forum for Science, Industry and Business

New MSc in Artificial Intelligence

The MSc which will be offered by the University of Southampton's School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) in October this year, builds on the School's flourishing MSc programme which this year attracted a record 145 students. The School has also just witnessed its largest Computer Science undergraduate intake since the dot-com crash.

The new MSc in Artificial Intelligence is research-led and incorporates both traditional and state-of-the art aspects of AI and Machine Learning, opening the path to many different subject areas and technologies.

‘AI and Machine Learning are becoming ever more prevalent in our society,’ said Dr Craig Saunders, Joint Course Leader. According to Dr Saunders, millions of people are already familiar with some of the scenarios where AI technologies are already employed, such as: web search, weather prediction, financial forecasting and 'personal recommended items' on shopping and music websites.

‘There is also much potential for these techniques in bio-informatics and chemo-informatics where proteomics and genomics are benefiting from novel algorithms; as well as spam filtering, opponent AI in modern computer games, and of course, robotics.’ said Dr Saunders.

The course will enable participants to study the fundamentals of all aspects of intelligent algorithms with the freedom to choose options and specialise where desired. Topics in the course cover a skill base which is in very high demand from the academic research community as well as a wide range of industrial companies covering sectors from biotechnology to finance.

‘The school has been very active in this area and conducting world-class research for some time and has many researchers working in various elements of Artificial Intelligence, including Intelligent Agents, Machine Learning, Game Theory, Evolutionary Algorithms, Complexity Science, Biometrics and Machine Vision among others,’ said Dr Saunders. ‘We have had a strong AI component to our undergraduate degree for many years, with many students electing to focus on this aspect in their third year project, including the recent success of Richard Jones and LastFM who used collaborative filtering techniques to recommend music to listeners.’

Helene Murphy | alfa
Further information:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/admissions/pg/msc/artificial_intelligence.php

Im Focus: First evidence on the source of extragalactic particles

For the first time ever, scientists have determined the cosmic origin of highest-energy neutrinos. A research group led by IceCube scientist Elisa Resconi, spokesperson of the Collaborative Research Center SFB1258 at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), provides an important piece of evidence that the particles detected by the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole originate from a galaxy four billion light-years away from Earth.

To rule out other origins with certainty, the team led by neutrino physicist Elisa Resconi from the Technical University of Munich and multi-wavelength...

Im Focus: Magnetic vortices: Two independent magnetic skyrmion phases discovered in a single material

For the first time a team of researchers have discovered two different phases of magnetic skyrmions in a single material. Physicists of the Technical Universities of Munich and Dresden and the University of Cologne can now better study and understand the properties of these magnetic structures, which are important for both basic research and applications.

Whirlpools are an everyday experience in a bath tub: When the water is drained a circular vortex is formed. Typically, such whirls are rather stable. Similar...

Im Focus: Breaking the bond: To take part or not?

Physicists working with Roland Wester at the University of Innsbruck have investigated if and how chemical reactions can be influenced by targeted vibrational excitation of the reactants. They were able to demonstrate that excitation with a laser beam does not affect the efficiency of a chemical exchange reaction and that the excited molecular group acts only as a spectator in the reaction.

A frequently used reaction in organic chemistry is nucleophilic substitution. It plays, for example, an important role in in the synthesis of new chemical...

Im Focus: New 2D Spectroscopy Methods

Optical spectroscopy allows investigating the energy structure and dynamic properties of complex quantum systems. Researchers from the University of Würzburg present two new approaches of coherent two-dimensional spectroscopy.

"Put an excitation into the system and observe how it evolves." According to physicist Professor Tobias Brixner, this is the credo of optical spectroscopy....

Im Focus: Chemical reactions in the light of ultrashort X-ray pulses from free-electron lasers

Ultra-short, high-intensity X-ray flashes open the door to the foundations of chemical reactions. Free-electron lasers generate these kinds of pulses, but there is a catch: the pulses vary in duration and energy. An international research team has now presented a solution: Using a ring of 16 detectors and a circularly polarized laser beam, they can determine both factors with attosecond accuracy.

Free-electron lasers (FELs) generate extremely short and intense X-ray flashes. Researchers can use these flashes to resolve structures with diameters on the...