National Academy of Sciences recognition for Web inventor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor of Computer Science in ECS, has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Professor Berners-Lee was elected to the (NAS) for his excellence in original scientific research. Membership of the NAS is one of the highest honours given to a scientist or engineer in the United States - over 180 living members of the NAS have won Nobel Prizes.

Tim Berners-Lee is 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. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, founded in 1994.

In 2006 he was appointed to a Chair of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and launched the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) with co-founders Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Dr Daniel J Weitzner. He recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web, at a special event at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He also gave key-notes at the Web Science Conference held in Athens in March, and sponsored by ECS, and at the World Wide Web Conference held last week in Madrid.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee became a fellow of the Royal Society in 2001. 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 HM Queen Elizabeth II and in 2007 he was awarded the Order of Merit. He is the author of "Weaving the Web".

Pictured: Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee (right) at the Web Science 09 Conference in Athens, with Dr Les Carr of ECS