fbpx

Latest - Business Sector: Academia

Dame Wendy Hall CBE

Dame Wendy Hall is a British computer scientist and Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute.  She was Dean of the Faculty of Physical Science and Engineering at the University of Southampton from 2010 to 2014.  Between 2002 and 2007 she was Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, where she was founding Head of the Intelligence, Agents, and Multimedia Research Group.  In 2000 she was awarded a CBE and became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.  She is also a distinguished Fellow of the BCS, a Fellow of the IET, and of the City and Guilds of London Institute, and holds a number of honorary degrees.  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. 

Professor Brian Randell

Brian has had a long and illustrious career in computing, starting work at English Electrics Atomic Power Division in 1957. Brian worked on various programming tasks, including the ALGOL 60 compiler for the KDF9 machine, which was the subject of his book, Algol 60 Implementation, along with Lawford Russell, one of the first books on compilers.  Brian then joined IBM Research at Yorktown Heights in 1964, where he worked on computer and systems design.  After five years at IBM, Brian became Professor of Computing Science at the Department of Computing Science at Newcastle University, where he has remained since. 

Norman Sanders

Norman Sanders was very much involved in the early days of the computer industry, being rightly called a computer pioneer working alongside other great pioneers like Sir Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler. Norman says that his working life consisted of helping to get the computer revolution going and he has published five books, numerous papers and articles alongside his work for employers such as Boeing, Metier and Sperry. He was also a technology adviser to Harold Wilson in the 1960s.

Interview with Sir Andrew Hopper

Andy Hopper studied computer science at Swansea under Professor David Aspinall then did his PhD in Cambridge where he worked on the Cambridge Ring.  His LAN company came to the attention of Acorn Computers and was taken into Acorn in 1979.   Hopper was appointed managing director of the Olivetti Cambridge Research lab in 1986.  As MD he helped more than 10 venture operations become independent companies under the benign eye of Olivetti.  On the closure of the lab Hopper focused on his professorship at Cambridge where he developed a strategy to get over 200 ventures from Cambridge University into the market.

Muffy Calder OBE

Muffy Calder is Vice Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering at Glasgow University.  She is also a Professor of Formal Methods.  She is a member of the governing body of EPSRC, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research.  She is Chair of the DCMS Science Advisory Committee and a member of REF Main Panel B.She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and, in 2011, she was awarded the OBE for services to computer science.

Sir Alan Rudge

Sir Alan Rudge has been called one of the top technical minds in the country. He took an unconventional path to the top doing a City and Guilds telecoms technicians course and then a diploma in electrical engineering at a polytechnic. He worked in the USA, taught at a UK university and then ran the Electrical Research Association. He was headhunted to run R&D at BT: his first act was to hand the R&D budget back to the operating units and make his laboratories bid for projects from the rest of BT. So successful was this approach that he doubled the number in BT R&D.

Professor Liz Bacon

Professor of Software Engineering, champion of women in STEM, Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at Abertay University in Dundee, BSC President: Liz has many accolades to her name including completing an industrial placement at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, during her sandwich degree in the 1984/85 academic year.

With others she helped change the school curriculum in computing and set-up more than 200 computers at school hubs across the country to train the teachers to deliver it. In 2016 Liz became a Trustee and Director of Bletchley Park Trust, the home of British code breaking.