Dame Wendy Hall

Wendy Hall, DBE, FRS, FREng is Regius Professor of Computer Science, Associate Vice President (International Engagement) and Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. She was Dean of the Faculty of Physical Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2014 and Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) from 2002 to 2007.

One of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, she has been at its forefront ever since. The influence of her work has been significant in many areas including digital libraries, the development of the Internet, and the emerging research discipline of Web Science. She is Managing Director of the Web Science Trust.

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 the same year. She was elected President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in July 2008, and was the first person from outside North America to hold this position. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the ACM, and a distinguished fellow of the British Computer Society.

In 2017, Dame Wendy was co-Chair of the UK government's AI Review. She became a member of the AI Council and was appointed the first UK AI Skills Champion in 2018, and was Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute (2020-2023). She is an advisor to the UK government and many other governments and companies around the world, and in 2023 was appointed to the United Nations high-level advisory body on artificial intelligence. Her latest book, Four Internets, co-written with Kieron O'Hara and published by OUP in 2021, is about data, geopolitics and the governance of cyberspace.