Sir Nigel Shadbolt

Join us for an exclusive event with Sir Nigel Shadbolt, one of the world’s leading authorities on artificial intelligence and open data. In a year defined by seismic technological shifts, Sir Nigel will cut through the noise to examine the critical issues.

This is a rare opportunity to hear firsthand from a visionary who has spent decades at the forefront of the AI revolution.

Speaker

Sir Nigel Shadbolt Executive Chair & Co-founder of the ODI

Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Executive Chair of the Open Data Institute, which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 2012. He is one of the UK’s foremost computer scientists. Sir Nigel was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of web science and is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence. He is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a visiting Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton. In November 2025, Nigel was appointed as Chair of AI@Oxford Research at the University of Oxford.

In 2009, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, appointed him and Sir Tim Berners-Lee as Information Advisors to transform access to Public Sector Information. This work led to the data.gov.uk site that now provides a portal to tens of thousands of datasets. In 2010, he joined the UK government’s Public Sector Transparency Board, overseeing Open Data releases across the public sector. He continues to advise the Government in a number of roles and in 2025 he was appointed to the Council for Science and Technology, which advises the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on strategic science and technology policy issues that cut across the responsibilities of individual government departments.

In May 2024 he published ‘As If Human: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence’, co-written with Roger Hampson, which provides a new approach to the challenges surrounding AI.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow and former President of the British Computer Society. He was knighted in 2013 for ‘services to science and engineering’.