BIOGRAPHY

• CoFounder and CTO, Inrupt Inc
• Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK
• Founding Director of the World Wide Web Foundation
• Professor Emeritus in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Co-Founder, Open Data Institute
• Director of World Wide Web Consortium

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford graduate and British computer scientist, invented the World Wide Web in 1989. Named one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Important People of the 20th Century,’ he is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt, which uses pioneering Solid technology to put individuals in control of their data, and give organisations new opportunities to create value for customers in an open marketplace of innovation. Sir Tim is the Founder and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the Web Foundation whose mission is to ensure that the World Wide Web serves humanity. He co-founded and is President of the Open Data Institute in London and is a Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, and an Emeritus Professor of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In April 2017, Sir Tim was awarded the Turing Prize which is considered the “Nobel Prize of Computing”. In 2004, Sir Tim was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth and in 2007, he was awarded the Order of Merit. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academy of Science. He has been the recipient of several honorary degrees.

SUMMARY OF WINNING ENTRY | THE GLOBAL NETWORK TECHNOLOGY

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, wrote the first web browser, and led the design and establishment of three critical web standards – namely, HTML, HTTP and URIs. These have enabled the seamless sharing and use of all information resources across the world on the web.

In 1980, while working as an independent contractor at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, Berners-Lee built a prototype information tracking system called ENQUIRE. In 1989 Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web (WWW) – a global hypertext system to allow sharing information across a wide range of different networks, computers, and countries. He then successfully developed the first web server and web browser in 1990.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international standards organization that oversees the continued development of the Web and develops interoperable technologies to lead the Web to its full potential. In 2009, he co-founded and is Director of the World Wide Web Foundation to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity. In 2012, he co-founded and is president of the London’s Open Data Institute, a non-profit private company with the mission to connect, equip and inspire people around the world to innovate with data.

Sir Tim has long promoted open government data globally and spends time fighting for rights such as net neutrality, privacy, and the openness of the Web.

He is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt.com, a tech start-up which uses, promotes and helps develop the open-source Solid platform. Solid (from SOcial LInked Data) aims to give people control and agency over their data and forms the next layer of the web (https://solid.mit.edu/). Socially, Solid is a movement toward a world in which users are in control, and empowered by controlling their own data: private, shared, and public. Solid is interested in investigating decentralized techniques and technologies that effect social change. It is exploring how to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in decentralized architectures that enable true data ownership; working on frameworks that ensure information can be shared, used, and manipulated in a way that is compliant with regulation, business rules, social norms, and user preferences; investigating methodologies to make algorithms trustworthy and accountable, as well as harnessing mobile technologies for disaster relief.

SCALE OF IMPACT

The impact of the World Wide Web is global and universal across all domains and walks of life. It is the backbone for all information processing, and communication activities across the world, and all socio-economic activities today are built on the web.

MEANINGFUL CHANGE

The World Wide Web has enabled global collaboration on all aspects of society, industry, economic development, media and communication and governance. It is the engine that underlies our daily activities both at the personal and societal level. It is no exaggeration to say that without the web the world would not be as it is today.