Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt

Nigel obtained his undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Newcastle. His postgraduate studies were in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. After this he established and led the AI Research Group at the Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham. He moved to the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science where his research focused on the science and engineering needed to support the continued development of the World Wide Web.

In 2009 he was appointed as Information Advisor to the UK Government, along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. This work led to the release of many thousands of public sector data sets as open data. In 2010 he was appointed to the UK Public Sector Transparency Board which oversaw the continued release of Government open data and he continues to advise Government in a number of roles.

Nigel is Chairman and Co-founder of the Open Data Institute (ODI), based in Shoreditch, London. The ODI specialised in the exploitation of Open Data supporting innovation, training and research in both the UK and internationally. He is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of ID protection company Garlik Ltd. In 2008 Garlik was awarded Technology Pioneer status by the Davos World Economic Forum and won the UK national BT Flagship IT Award. In December 2011 Garlik was acquired by Experian Ltd.

In its 50th Anniversary year 2006-2007, he was President of the British Computer Society. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.