Dr Alex Weddell

Alex Weddell is an Associate Professor in the Smart Electronic Materials and Systems Research Group, in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK. The school is the best in the UK for the quality and volume of research in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (REF 2014). He is the Technical Manager of the ARM-ECS Research Centre and a member of the management group for the Centre for IoT and Pervasive Systems.

His main research interests are in wireless sensing, energy harvesting systems, intelligent sensing for monitoring the health of machines, and system liftetime monitoring and extension. He is most interested in research that's aimed at solving real problems, and demonstrated using physical prototypes. He has graduated three PhD students (as main supervisor, plus seven as co-supervisor) and is currently supervising (or co-supervising) a further six.

Alex leads a second-year module on Computer Engineering, and teaches a third-year undergraduate module on Embedded Networked Systems and an MSc module on IoT Networks. He supervises many practical third-year individual projects, fourth-year industrial Group Design projects, and MSc summer projects.

He was awarded the MEng Electronic Engineering (first-class honours) at the University of Southampton in 2005, followed by a PhD, thesis entitled "A comprehensive scheme for reconfigurable energy-aware wireless sensor nodes", in 2010. During his PhD, he contributed to the Data Information Fusion Defence Technology Centre (DIF DTC) 'Adaptive Energy-Aware Sensor Networks' project and the EPSRC platform grant 'New Directions for Intelligent Sensors'. He has experience with a range of energy harvesting devices and has developed a platform which supports a mix of energy sources to power an energy-aware wireless sensor node. He worked as a Research Fellow on the 'Next Generation Energy-Harvesting Electronics: Holistic Approach' project, looking at energy device modelling and system-level design approaches before being appointed as a Lecturer in February 2013. He was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2023.

He has acted as co-investigator on an EU Clean Sky 2 project "Intelligent Integrated Bearing System", developing self-powered smart bearings for jet engines. He was also a co-investigator on the EU Horizon 2020 project "EnABLES: European Infrastructure Powering the Internet of Things" and the EPSRC Platform project "Wearable and Autonomous Computing for Future Smart Cities".

Alex is also passionate about outreach. He ran electronics activities for the annual Electronics & Computer Science Taster Course from 2015 to 2023, and has led workshops for A-level Physics and Computer Science teachers, and other teachers' CPD activities aiming to get hands-on electronics into the classroom. This work was recognised when the team was nominated for the 2017 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Collegiality. He contributed to development of Southampton's A-level Physics: Music Mixer and A-level Computing: Logic & Arithmetic kits, which won the 2019 Vice-Chancellor's Award in Public Engagement and Outreach.