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TIM BERNERS-LEE
FACULTY MEMBER
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. He is also the 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also heads the Decentralized Information Group (DIG). He is also a Professor in the Electronics and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK. Berners-Lee is also the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 that develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. He is also a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, launched in 2009 to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity. Previously, he acted as the Director of the Web Science Trust (WST), an organization launched in 2009 to promote research and education in Web Science, the multidisciplinary study of humanity connected by technology. In 2000, he authored the book, Weaving the Web. A globally respected proponent of open government data, Berners-Lee is a member of the UK’s Transparency Board and president of London’s Open Data Institute. In 2001 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has been the recipient of several international awards including the Japan Prize, the Prince of Asturias Foundation Prize, the Millennium Technology Prize and Germany’s Die Quadriga award. In 2004, he was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth, and in 2007 he was awarded the Order of Merit. In 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. On March 18, 2013, Berners-Lee, along with Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreesen, was awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for “ground-breaking innovation in engineering that has been of global benefit to humanity.” He tweets @timberners_lee. |