Dame Wendy Hall to deliver Arnold Barks Christmas lecture

Professor Dame Wendy Hall, who worked with Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the development of the World Wide Web, will be presenting this year’s Arnold Barks Memorial Christmas Lecture on 3 December.

Organised by the Institution’s Wessex Region and its Salisbury Area Committee as well as the Dorset and South Wiltshire IET, the lecture will take place at the Salisbury Arts Centre between 6.15pm and 9.30pm.

A brilliant communicator – on what can seem to be impenetrable topics – Professor Dame Wendy Hall DBE FRS FREng CEng FIET FBCS PhD is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. 

As the World Wide Web celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014, it is timely that Dame Wendy should deliver the 9th Arnold Barks Memorial Christmas Lecture this year.

The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Semantic Web, and the emerging research discipline of web science. She has published over 400 papers and is frequently invited to speak at high-profile conferences and events.

With Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006 and she is currently Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in web science.

In July 2014, she was named the most influential woman in UK IT by ComputerWeekly.com. Within the last 18 months she has appeared on BBC Radio 4 as the subject of ‘A Life Scientific’, on Woman’s Hour and Desert Island Discs.

In addition to playing a prominent role in the development of her subject, she also helps shape science and engineering policy and education.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year's Honours list, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 2009.

She was President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 2008-10 and the first person from outside of North America to hold this position.

Other significant posts she has held include Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology, founding member of the European Research Council, member of the EPSRC Council, President of the British Computer Society and EPSRC Senior Research Fellow.

Dame Wendy is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and a member of the Chatham House Global Commission on Internet Governance.

More details
What: 9th Arnold Barks Memorial Christmas Lecture
When: 3 December 2014, 6.15pm to 9.30pm
Where: Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury Arts Centre, Bedwin Street, Salisbury, SP1 3UT
Booking details: Book your ticket

Image © Dame Wendy Hall