Graduation 2015 marks achievements of students and honorary graduates

Around 330 students from Electronics and Computer (ECS) Science attended Graduation at the University of Southampton last week, alongside leading business and engineering figures who received honorary degrees.

Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, businesswoman, philanthropist, and co-founder of Lastminute.com, and Professor William Webb, President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) – Europe’s largest Professional Engineering body, joined this year’s graduates at ceremonies held on the University’s Highfield Campus.

The Graduation ceremonies took place in the Turner Sims Concert Hall and the Nuffield Theatre on Wednesday 15 July. This year, 109 Bachelor degrees were awarded, 164 Masters and 61 Doctorates.

Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, Doctor of Science

Martha Lane Fox co-founded Europe’s largest travel and leisure website lastminute.com with Brent Hoberman in 1998, they took it public in 2000 and sold it in 2005. In 2007 Martha founded her own charitable foundation Antigone.org.uk and also serves as a Patron of AbilityNet, Reprieve, Camfed and Just for Kids Law.

Martha co- founded and chairs LuckyVoice, revolutionising the karaoke industry. She chairs MakieLab. She is a Non-Executive Director at Marks & Spencer and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is currently chair of Go On UK, a coalition of public and private sector partners that are helping millions more people and organisations online.

In 2013 Martha was awarded a CBE and was appointed a crossbench peer in the House of Lords in March 2013. She was appointed Chancellor of the Open University in March 2014 and in 2015 Martha joined the board of the Creative Industries Federation and the Open Data Institute.

Professor William Webb, Doctor of Science

An alumnus of ECS, William is President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology – the IET. He is also CEO of the Weightless SIG, a body standardising new global machine to machine (M2M) technology.

He was one of the founding directors of Neul, a company developing M2M technologies and networks, which was formed at the start of 2011 and subsequently sold to Huawei. Prior to this William was a Director at Ofcom where he managed a team providing technical advice and performing research. He has worked for a range of communications consultancies and spent three years providing strategic management across Motorola’s entire communications portfolio, based in Chicago.

William has published 14 books, over 100 papers, and 18 patents. He is a Visiting Professor at Southampton, Surrey and Trinity College Universities, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and the IET.