“I thoroughly enjoyed designing and working on my project so the opportunity to be recognised for the success I achieved is especially rewarding.”
Richard Carter, runner-up

The UKESF are delighted to announce the results of the 2020 Embedded Systems Competition. Unfortunately, we were unable to hold an event to present the awards, but are hoping to hold a virtual event later this year.

With considerably more entries than in 2019, the judges announced Jack Sampford as the winner, and Richard Carter as the runner-up. Jack, who studies at Loughborough University received £1,000, and Richard Carter, studying at University of Southampton, received £500.

UltraSoC, now part of Mentor, a Siemens business, sponsors the UKESF in running the competition, which aims to raise awareness about and interest in embedded systems among undergraduates studying Electronics. The competition highlights excellence in students completing their major individual project on embedded systems and enables understanding of how to architect and implement future complex embedded systems in the UK.

The national competition was open to engineering undergraduates studying at one of the UKESF’s 24 partner universities who were completing their major individual project with a principal focus on embedded systems. Entrants were required to submit to a summary of their project on an A1 printable poster, including the aim, results, impact and next steps.

Jack’s entry was titled ‘Exploration of Embedded Cryptography for NoC-Based Multi-Core Architectures’ and he said, “Winning this award represents a wonderful end to a challenging year, and will be an asset in my ongoing career working with embedded electronic systems.”

Dr Chinthana Panagamuwa MEng, PhD, FHEA, Lecturer in Photonic Systems and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Electronics based Programmes, commented “That is fantastic news!”, as Jack is the first winner of a UKESF Competition from Loughborough University.

Richard Carter, who is a UKESF Scholar, was placed as the runner-up with his entry ‘Development of Bicycle Wheel Mounted Persistence of Vision (PoV) Display’. Richard said “I am delighted to be selected as the national runner-up of the 2020 UKESF Embedded Systems Competition. I thoroughly enjoyed designing and working on my project so the opportunity to be recognised for the success I achieved is especially rewarding. As with many embedded systems, there are many things from my project that I would like to improve on, and I have already started working on the next iteration of my PoV Bike Wheel Display. My thanks go to UltraSoC and UKESF for sponsoring, organising, and judging the competition.”

 “Many congratulations to Richard, it’s great to see Southampton students being successful in the UKESF Competitions yet again. This is a testament to the excellent quality of our students, and particularly in the domain of embedded systems.”
Prof Geoff Merrett, Head of Centre for IoT and Pervasive Systems, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton

“As a leading provider of embedded analytics, we were incredibly impressed with the standard of entrants in the Embedded Systems Competition and we are delighted to have been involved. I’d personally like to congratulate both Jack and Richard, the worthy winners of this award, and to thank Stewart and the team at the UKESF for organising. The standards of the student projects confirm our belief that companies like ourselves benefit significantly from building closer ties with academia and why our University Program is an important and on-going initiative for UltraSoC.”
Aileen Ryan, Chief Strategy Officer, UltraSoC