Society Medal 2020: Winner and finalists

The winner was: 

Elizabeth Denham CBE, The Information Commissioner. 

Recognising her outstanding contribution to making digital technology good for society, the judges cited her investigation into the unlawful data collection practices in political campaigns (including micro-targeting for marketing) which probed organisations including Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and Leave EU.

The finalists were:

The BCS Society Board reviewed all the nominations and shortlisted the following four finalists:

• Elizabeth Denham
• Professor Margaret Ross
• Kyriakos Pierrakakis
• Professor Carsten Maple 

The final stage was a consideration of these four successful individuals, by our Society Medal judging panel to decide the overall winner of the award.

The panel was made up of:

• Kathy Farndon, Vice-President, BCS; Chair, Society Board
• Rebecca George OBE - President, BCS
• Paul Martynenko - Chair BCS Registration and Standards Committee, Past President BCS 2017 2018,
• Dame Wendy Hall DBE, FRS, FREng - Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton
• Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt FRS FREng CITP CEng FBCS CPsychol - Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He is Chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Tim Berners-Lee.