Southampton Professor KNIGHTED

Computer science is set to go medieval next year with the news that a Southampton professor has been made a Knight of the realm.

Esteemed ECS professor, Nigel Shadbolt, will receive the accolade as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours, in view of his services to science and engineering.

Professor Shadbolt, alongside his colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has been advising the Government since 2009 on opening up access to public sector data.  The duo’s ongoing interest in the open data movement then led to the creation last December of the Open Data Institute.

This ambitious project, headquartered in Shoreditch, East London, aims to “unlock supply, generate demand, create and disseminate knowledge” by making vast amounts of public data freely accessible to business leaders and the common man alike.

The knighthood is the result of a 30-year career of research into artificial intelligence, linked data and the semantic web, which have transformed the way we use the Internet since Shadbolt moved to the University in 2000.

Professor Shadbolt expressed delight but also surprise, saying,

I’m fortunate to have been involved at a crucial period working with outstanding colleagues in the development of both Web Science and the Open Data movement.  I hope that I can continue to make a difference as we seek to understand how the web is evolving, and ensure that we are empowered individually and collectively.

The newly created Sir Nigel joins an elite, Avengers-like group of Southampton professors who have received the highest honour in the land.  Shadbolt’s colleague Sir Tim Berners-Lee is maybe the most illustrious of the group, having invented the World Wide Web at CERN in 1990.