British Computer Society honours IT professionals with Lovelace Medal & Roger Needham Award

The Lovelace Medal and Roger Needham Award are presented annually by the BCS in recognition of contributions made by individuals to the development of IT.

Dr Tony Storey has been given the award in recognition of his contribution in the advancement of information systems to mission critical computing. He is recognised as one of the leading UK IT industry role models and has architected and guided development of software that underpins much of the global economy.

Dr Storey's work at IBM's UK Labs has led to the transformation and revitalisation of CICS, the invention of MQSeries and extensions of Java for use in the server environment. He has championed major national UK e-Science initiatives and has encouraged IBM to embrace open software standards, bringing together Web Services and GRID computing technologies to deliver open mission critical computing.

Commenting on Dr Storey's achievements, David Clarke, BCS chief executive says: "I am delighted that the BCS is able to recognise Dr Storey with this prestigious award. The contribution he has made to the UK's standing in IT is exceptional. He is a worldwide authority on high-availability, continuous operations and fault tolerant computing and his GRID computing collaboration with UK academia has shaped industry thinking on the middleware infrastructure needed for commercial GRID exploitation. Tony's influence on open standards continues with Web Services, so shaping the future evolution of the IT industry. A truly deserved recipient of the Lovelace Medal."

The Roger Needham Award, sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge, is presented to Professor Wenfei Fan who is universally recognised to be a world leading researcher in both theory and practice of databases.

The general goal of Professor Fan's work has been to bring the efficiency and functionality of databases, which has been built up over the past 30 years and has solid theoretical foundations, to bear on data on the web. In the past a few years his research has contributed to the UK's standing in this area, and in particular, to the UK's worldwide lead in the studies of integrity constraints for XML, XML publishing, and data quality. His work has resulted in not only a number of fundamental results, but also several practical developments including schema-directed XML publishing techniques, XML access control solutions, and a method of data cleaning based on conditional dependencies, a form of dependencies that Professor Fan invented for this purpose.

Dr Andrew Herbert, Managing Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge says: "Professor Fan's work is truly advancing the state of the art in database theory and practice. The purpose of the Roger Needham award is to recognize and support talented researchers such as Professor Fan, whose work is an example of the academic significance and technical impact of UK based-researchers and institutions."

The BCS Lovelace Medal was established in 1998 in honour of Lady Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron. She was the assistant and patron of Charles Babbage and wrote programs for his "Analytical Engine", now recognised as the first computer program.

The Medal is presented annually to individuals who, in the opinion of BCS, have made a significant contribution to the advancement of Information Systems.

As winner, Dr Storey will be invited to give the BCS Lovelace Lecture in 2009

The Roger Needham award, part of the British Computer Society's remit to encourage and recognise personal endeavour in computer science, is sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge and established in memory of Microsoft's first director of research outside the US. It is awarded for a distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher within ten years of their PhD. It offers a £5000 prize together with an opportunity to give a public lecture on their work at the Royal Society.

As winner, Professor Fan will be invited to give the Roger Needham Lecture in November 2008.

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