Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Honorary Graduate Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho have been made Distinguished Fellows by BCS, formerly the British Computer Society, The Chartered Institute for IT.
As Distinguished Fellows, the duo join some of the top names in the history of the industry including Southampton Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates and Vint Cerf.
Dame Wendy, Executive Director of the Southampton-based Web Science Institute and Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, was one of the first computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia and has been at its forefront ever since. Through her leadership roles, Dame Wendy has shattered many glass ceilings, readily deploying her position on numerous national and international bodies to promote the role of women in Science, Engineering and Technology, and acting as an important role model.
Baroness Lane-Fox is renowned for co-founding Europe’s largest travel and leisure website, lastminute.com, in 1998. She has gone on to make a significant contribution to the government’s digital agenda more recently founding and chairing doteveryone.org.uk, a new national organisation, committed to making the UK brilliant in the network age. The University made Baroness Lane-Fox an Honorary Doctor of Science in 2015.
Paul Fletcher, BCS Group CEO described Dame Wendy as one of the most influential people in IT, both in the UK and world-wide and recognised her “tireless work in championing women in technology for more than thirty years”. He went on to say that Baroness Lane-Fox embodies the BCS philosophy of making IT good for society.
Dame Wendy said:
“I am delighted and deeply honoured to receive this award. When I joined the BCS many years ago as a junior lecturer at the University of Southampton, I never imagined I would ever join the ranks of such a distinguished group. There is no doubt that being a member of BCS played a significant part in the development of my career, and I am very privileged to be able to accept this award.”