Professor Tim Bell, of Christchurch, CNZM, for services to computer science education
Professor Tim Bell has contributed to foundational computer science for 40 years. He is known for his work on compression, which transforms text into a format that enables efficient storage and transmission. He co-invented modern text retrieval and data compression techniques, which are now ubiquitous in search engines. He co-wrote the influential books ‘Text Compression’ and ‘Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and indexing documents and images’. He co-authored ‘Computer Science Unplugged’, which teaches computer science to children without a computer. He has worked with the Ministry of Education to establish computer science in New Zealand schools. He created CS-At-Home and CS-At-a-Distance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Bell’s work has influenced the introduction of computer science in school curriculums in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Norway, Singapore, India, Switzerland and more.