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: Scientists present new observations to understand the phase transition in quantum chromodynamics

The building blocks of matter in our universe were formed in the first 10 microseconds of its existence, according to the currently accepted scientific picture. After the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago, matter consisted mainly of quarks and gluons, two types of elementary particles whose interactions are governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interaction. In the early universe, these particles moved (nearly) freely in a quark-gluon plasma.

This is a joint press release of University Muenster and Heidelberg as well as the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt.

Then, in a phase transition, they combined and formed hadrons, among them the building blocks of atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons. In the current issue of...

Im Focus: Patented nanostructure for solar cells: Rough optics, smooth surface

Thin-film solar cells made of crystalline silicon are inexpensive and achieve efficiencies of a good 14 percent. However, they could do even better if their shiny surfaces reflected less light. A team led by Prof. Christiane Becker from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has now patented a sophisticated new solution to this problem.

"It is not enough simply to bring more light into the cell," says Christiane Becker. Such surface structures can even ultimately reduce the efficiency by...

Im Focus: New soft coral species discovered in Panama

A study in the journal Bulletin of Marine Science describes a new, blood-red species of octocoral found in Panama. The species in the genus Thesea was discovered in the threatened low-light reef environment on Hannibal Bank, 60 kilometers off mainland Pacific Panama, by researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama (STRI) and the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (CIMAR) at the University of Costa Rica.

Scientists established the new species, Thesea dalioi, by comparing its physical traits, such as branch thickness and the bright red colony color, with the...

Im Focus: New devices based on rust could reduce excess heat in computers

Physicists explore long-distance information transmission in antiferromagnetic iron oxide

Scientists have succeeded in observing the first long-distance transfer of information in a magnetic group of materials known as antiferromagnets.

Im Focus: Finding Nemo's genes

An international team of researchers has mapped Nemo's genome

An international team of researchers has mapped Nemo's genome, providing the research community with an invaluable resource to decode the response of fish to...