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Heriot-Watt University Dubai Campus has hosted its inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Lecture with an inspirational speaker in Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Director of the Web Science Institute, University of Southampton.
It is a real honour that our inaugural lecture was delivered by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a pioneer of the internet and world-leading expert on web science.
Heriot-Watt University has established the prestigious Vice-Chancellor's Distinguished Lectures series to bring global leaders of industry, business and academia to share their knowledge and vision with students, colleagues and guests. The lectures cover globally important topics, from manufacturing and energy sustainability to the future of the internet, and are designed to provoke discussion and debate.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall is one of the world's leading computer scientists and a pioneer in the way we communicate today. Her lecture, 'Internet Histories and Futures', highlighted the work and latest developments of The Web Observatory project and how it is being applied to the study of internet histories and futures.
Professor Richard Williams, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Heriot-Watt University, said, “We are delighted to bring extraordinary people as Distinguished Lecturers to our extraordinary University here in Dubai. We remain the largest high quality institute in the UAE, operating as an integrated University across our five sites in three countries. Heriot-Watt taught the first computer science degree in Scotland over 50 years ago and it was the first degree programme to launch in Heriot-Watt Dubai over 11 years ago. It is a real honour that our inaugural lecture was delivered by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a pioneer of the internet and world-leading expert on web science. This topic touches all our lives and is critical to the economy of Dubai.”
Professor Dame Wendy Hall said, “The project aims to develop the standards and services that will interlink a number of existing or emergent Web Observatories to enable the sharing, discoverability and use of public or private datasets and analytics across different observatories, on a large, distributed scale.”