Roger Needham Lecture

This prestigious lecture is presented by the winner of the Roger Needham Award.

Who receives the award?

The award was established in memory of Professor Roger Needham (1935-2003) and is made annually for a distinguished research contribution in computer science by a UK based researcher who has completed up to 10 years of post-doctoral research.

2019 Roger Needham Lecture

Modelling and Verification using Automata Learning

Winner of the 2018 Roger Needham Award, Professor Alexandra Silva, a professor of algebra, semantics and computation at the University College London, was the speaker of the 2019 Roger Needham lecture.

Date: 4 June 2019
Venue: The Royal Society, London
Find out more and watch the video

Past lectures

The Roger Needham lectures shine a light on the fundamental research taking place in the UK and what it means for the industry.

Dr Alastair Donaldson

Many-core programming: How to go really fast without crashing.

More about the 2017 lecture

Dr Sharon Goldwater

Language learning in humans and machines: making connections to make progress

More about the 2016 lecture

Prof Niloy Mitra

Linking form and function, computationally.

More about the 2015 lecture

Dr Natasa Przulj

Mining biological networks.

More about the 2014 lecture

Nominate for next year's award

Do you know someone who's been involved in ground-breaking research in the field of computer science?

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About Roger Needham

Roger Needham pioneered the technique of protecting passwords using a one-way hash function. Among his theoretical contributions is the development of the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic. The Needham-Schroeder security protocol forms the basis of the Kerberos authentication and key-exchange system, and he also co-designed the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms.

Professor Needham joined Cambridge's Computer Laboratory (then called the Mathematical Laboratory) in 1962, becoming its head in 1980. He was made a professor in 1981 and remained with the laboratory until his retirement in 1995.