Professor Dame Wendy Hall will foster cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and international collaboration as a new Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in China.

One of the world's foremost computer scientists, Dame Wendy is Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton and plays a leading role in shaping science and engineering policy and education in the UK and internationally. She is the UK’s first AI Skills Champion and Executive Director of the Web Science Institute.

The international appointment will promote the development of Web and Data Science, AI and related research directions at the major research university in Beijing. Dame Wendy will conduct AI research and jointly publish papers in top-level international conferences and journals in collaboration with researchers in China.

Her visiting chair is based in Tsinghua University's historic Department of Computer Science and Technology. U.S. News and World Report ranks the institution fourth in the world in its Best Global Universities for Computer Science.

Dame Wendy says: "I am delighted to accept this position with such a renowned international research partner and look forward to collaborating on new ground-breaking research in our discipline. We are entering a pivotal time in the evolution of AI, Web and Data Science, and academic leadership must continue driving the development of technologies that best serve people and society."

Dame Wendy was co-Chair of the UK government's AI Review, which was published in October 2017. In 2020, she was appointed as Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

With Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Dame Wendy co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006 and is the Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in Web Science.

She became a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 2009 UK New Year's Honours list, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

She has previously been President of the ACM, Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, was a founding member of the European Research Council and Chair of the European Commission’s ISTAG 2010-2012, was a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, and until June 2018, was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on the Digital Economy.

Professor Shiyan Hu has been elected as a member of the prestigious European Academy of Sciences and Arts for significant contributions to the design, optimisation and security of cyber-physical systems.

The University of Southampton professor is an international leader in his field and Director of the School of Electronics and Computer Science's Cyber Security Academy.

The European Academy of Sciences and Arts has around 2,000 members, including 34 Nobel Prize Laureates, dedicated to innovative research, international collaboration as well as the exchange and dissemination of knowledge. The organisation is committed to promoting scientific and societal progress, with its members elected based on their outstanding achievements.

Professor Hu, Chair in Cyber-Physical System Security, says: "I am delighted to be elected as a member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is a unique honour in recognition of my research accomplishments and international leadership in my research fields. I will leverage this international reputation to keep promoting the national and global collaborative activities at Southampton and our Cyber Security Academy."

The Cyber Security Academy was one of the first investments from the Government's CyberInvest scheme and fosters partnerships between government agencies, academia and industrial leaders to deliver research, innovation, education, training and outreach.

Professor Hu's academic leadership is recognised as a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and Fellow of the British Computer Society.

He has published more than 150 refereed papers in the area of Cyber-Physical Systems, Cyber-Physical System Security, and VLSI Computer Aided Design, where most of his journal articles appeared in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)/ Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions. He is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, an IEEE Systems Council Distinguished Lecturer, a recipient of the 2017 IEEE Computer Society TCSC Middle Career Researcher Award, and a recipient of the 2014 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

His publications have received distinctions such as the 2018 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Award, the 2017 Keynote Paper in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, the Front Cover Paper in IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience in March 2014, and multiple Thomson Reuters ESI Highly Cited Papers/Hot Papers. His ultra-fast slew buffering technique has been widely deployed in industry for designing over 50 microprocessor and ASIC chips such as IBM flagship chips POWER 7 and 8.

Professor Hu is Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems and Editor-In-Chief of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. He has served as an Associate Editor for five IEEE/ACM Transactions such as IEEE TCAD, IEEE TII and ACM TCPS and as a Guest Editor for various IEEE/ACM journals such as Proceedings of the IEEE and IEEE Transactions on Computers.

In 2020, the University of Southampton became one of the first organisations in the country to be recognised as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education. By receiving a Gold Award for Education by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC, which is part of GCHQ) Southampton became one of a handful of universities to gain recognition as a Centre of Excellence for both Cyber Security Education and Research, which it first obtained in 2012.