Our performance in everyday noisy situations is known to depend on aural and visual senses. The ‘multi-modal’ nature of speech perception has been confirmed by research, which has established that listeners unconsciously lip-read to improve the intelligibility of signals amid background noise.
In the next decade, distributed sensor network systems made of insect-scale flying sensors will enable a step change in monitoring natural disasters and remote areas.
Microwave engineers, infectious disease specialists and polymer scientists from the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and the University of Strathclyde have teamed up to create a novel microwave sterilisation method that could revolutionise the way ambulances and hospitals are being disinfected.
The School’s Professor Harald Haas is leading the University’s involvement in INITIATE, an EPSRC-funded project which has just opened a call for collaboration from third party projects to explore the future capabilities of the internet. INITIATE brings together the UK’s expertise in network research and innovation along with operational, state-of the-art facilities at five leading networking labs in the Universities of Bristol, Lancaster, Edinburgh and King’s College London as well as at Digital Catapult, London.
School tech spin-out PureLifi has raised $18 million (£14m) to support a roll-out of its lifi technology to the mass consumer market. Lifi is a cellular wireless networking technology invented by Professor Harald Haas of the School’s Research Institute for Digital Communications. This financial boost will enable the company to focus on developing components which can be easily integrated into mobile decides, such as phones, laptops and tablets, and provide these to manufacturers operating on a mass scale.
