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Professor Nigel Shadbolt FREng CEng FBCS CITP CPsychol

Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deputy Head (Research) of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He is a Director of the Web Science Trust, and of the Web Foundation - both organisations have a common commitment to advance our understanding of the Web and promote the Web's positive impact on society. Together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee he has recently been appointed an Information Advisor by the Prime Minister to help transform public access to Government information.

In its 50th Anniversary year 2006 - 07, Nigel was President of the British Computer Society.  He is a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.

Between 2000-7, he was the Director of the £7.5m EPSRC Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT).   AKT was particularly influential in establishing the viability and value of web-based semantic technologies.  He has recently been awarded a further £1.98m by the EPSRC to build on this work in the EnAKTing project. In 2005 the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) began to explore the use of this approach within Government in a pilot project AKTive PSI.

He has been involved in a wide range of entrepreneurial activities. He has been a Director of ECS Partners Ltd. a University of Southampton owned company charged with developing and securing commercial and consultancy work for staff within the School of Electronics and Computer Science. In 2006 he was one of three founding Directors and Chief Technology Officer of Garlik Ltd, a company specialising in consumer products and services to put people and their families in control of their own digital information. In 2008 Garlik was awarded Technology Pioneer status by the Davos World Economic Forum and won the prestigious UK national BT Flagship IT Award. He is the co-author of The Spy in the Coffee Machine and has an interest in issues to do with privacy and trust in the Digital age.

From 2001 to 2004 he was Editor in Chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems and in 2005 he was appointed Emeritus Editor in Chief.  He is also a Fellow of the European AI Association (ECCAI). 

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