Sir Nigel Shadbolt

Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Executive Chair of the Open Data Institute, which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and is one of the UK’s foremost computer scientists.  

He is a leading researcher in artificial intelligence and was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of web science. 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 2009 the Prime Minister appointed him and Sir Tim Berners-Lee as Information Advisors to transform access to Public Sector Information. This work led to the highly acclaimed 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 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’.