Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a leader in the Semantic Web movement that is enabling users to identify, reuse, and derive new knowledge from existing data, is President of ACM, serving a two-year term from July 2008 to June 2010. She is the first person outside of North America to hold this position.

Dame Wendy is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK. She was Head
of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) from 2002-2007, and the founding Head of the
Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group in ECS. She has published over 400 papers in areas such as hypermedia, multimedia, digital libraries, and Web technologies. She was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the New Year 2009 Honours List, one of only six for outstanding services to science and technology, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society later the same year.

She has served in many leadership roles in advancing science and engineering policy and education, the role of women in CS, and global outreach.

Her current research includes applications of the Semantic Web and exploring the interface between the life sciences and the physical sciences. She is a Founding Director, along with Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Daniel J. Weitzner, of the Web Science Research Initiative.

ACM press releases:

ACM Salutes President Wendy Hall’s Appointment as DBE by Queen Elizabeth

ACM President Presents Latest Semantic Web Applications for Digital Libraries, Electronic Publishers

ACM Elects New Leaders Committed to International Initiatives