The innovative discipline of Web Science is 10 years old this year, and students and staff are invited to help celebrate this important anniversary by joining the global birthday party on Tuesday 29 November.
The University has played a significant role in the development of the Web over the last 25 years, and will mark the anniversary with a live event in London. A Global ‘TV Channel’ will feature events and activities from around the world.
The Channel will go live online and broadcast on the big screen in the foyer of Building 53, Highfield Campus from 09:30, making virtual ‘visits’ to Singapore, Bangalore, London, Berlin and Chicago throughout the day.
The Channel will also feature highlights of key research outputs. Contributors include Martha Lane Fox, Vint Cerf, Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Doc Searls, and other Web Science leaders.
From 12:30, the Channel will feature live streaming of the London event, where a panel of experts from industry and academia including Dame Wendy Hall and Sir Nigel Shadbolt will discuss ‘Trust and the Web’.
A further panel at 13:50 will focus on ‘Science at the Cutting Edge – Research from the WSTNet Labs’ featuring Southampton Professors Leslie Carr and Susan Halford joining experts from Cardiff, Oxford, Imperial College and China’s Tsinghua University.
Web Science was first conceived as the Web Science Research Initiative and launched at a press conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in November 2006.
The Web Science Trust was formally established in 2010 as a charity, followed by the formation of the Web Science Institute. Both are hosted by the University.
Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Institute, commented:
For WebScience@10, we’re bringing together some of the best minds to help us celebrate some of the impact that Web Science has had over the last 10 years – the major challenges we currently face and where we’re going in the future.
