CME Group's Center for Innovation today announced that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and Founding Director, World Wide Web Foundation, is the 12threcipient of the CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award. CME Group will present the award at the ninth annual Global Financial Leadership Conference in Naples, Fla., on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, in order to develop a culture of accessibility, openness and discovery. Since that time, the web has changed the world, arguably becoming the most powerful communication medium the world has ever known.
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award strives to celebrate innovation that, through practical application, has had a positive impact on the economic well-being of individuals, industries or nations. This award honors an individual or group whose innovative ideas, products or services have created significant change to markets, commerce or trade.
"The value of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention is impossible to describe or to measure," said CME Group'sChairman Emeritus and co-founder of the Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award, Leo Melamed. "It literally enabled all the people on Planet Earth to be connected. It is difficult to find a greater achievement."
"I am honored to receive the 2016 CME Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award," said Berners-Lee. "The web was designed as a means of sharing information. Let us all continue to encourage the use of technology to foster creativity, innovation, positive connection and democracy for all."
A graduate of Oxford University, Berners-Lee teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering, and in a joint appointment in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is also a professor in the electronics and computer science department at the University of Southampton in the U.K.; director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); and author of Weaving the Web and many other publications.
The CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award recipient, formerly known as the Fred Arditti Innovation Award, is chosen annually by members of the Competitive Markets Advisory Council (CMAC). The award's namesakes are Leo Melamed, in recognition of his revolutionary achievements in introducing financial futures instruments to the world in 1972; and former CME Group Chief Economist Fred Arditti, who was instrumental in developing the index upon which CME Group's Eurodollar futures contract, the world's most actively traded futures contract, was based. Past recipients of the award can be found on the CME Group Center for Innovation website.
