The life scientific : 8/8 [Wendy Hall].

Part of a series of programmes in which Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at Surrey University, talks to leading scientists about their life and work. This part features one of the world's leading computer scientists, Wendy Hall. After studying pure mathematics she moved into computer science in 1984, and in the 1990s became her university's first female Professor of Engineering. Today she is interested in the sociological applications of computer science and the web as a tool for good. They talk about her studies in maths and science and her early involvement with computers before she took a job at Southampton University in computer science. From here, she took a sabbatical at the University of Michigan where she was exposed to hypertext and hypermedia. One of her early colleagues, Tony Hay, now vice-president of research at Microsoft, recalls the insight she brought back to the UK from this. Wendy talks about the late 1980s and how they were considering ways to use the network to connect more. She compares the timelines of what she was doing with her team using a Microcosm system, and what Tim Berners-Lee was doing in CERN, including how he understood the network better than she did. She talks further about Tim Berners-Lee's legacy in computer science. In 1991, she went to a demo on the World Wide Web in Texas given by him, and later they began to collaborate. Jim Al-Khalili plays a clip from a 1990 programme called 'Hyperland' by Douglas Adams, and they talk about how this programme inspired her. Moving on from the original vision of the Web as a web of data, Wendy has become more interested in how machines and people analyse, process and interpret data leading to the semantic web. They talk about web science, and the need for people to provide data so that larger eco-systems can be built. Jim asks what her views are on Internet regulation, and whilst Wendy feels that the open and free nature of the Internet and the Web should be preserved, she believes it is very important that people should be safe within that environment. Her colleague, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, talks about her resilience and consideration for colleagues when their department was destroyed by fire. Wendy's knack of getting the right people to work together is discussed as is Southampton University and its range of interdisciplinary courses in Web Science. Jim highlights a term, 'Web Observatory', that she has used recently in her published papers and asks her to explain it. The term is about sharing data and then joining it up in the new information web eco-system that is being created. They consider how few women there are in computing in the west and how in some areas, such as south-east Asia, this is not the case. Finally, UK innovation is discussed and they ask why there isn't a British Google or Facebook. Wendy feels that the UK doesn't invest in things early enough, or finish them quickly when they go wrong. She thinks we should be more agile with development, and not insist on funding things that have failed just because funders want a return.