EWADA — Solid Protocol & Data Sovereignty
The Oxford Martin Programme on Ethical Web and Data Architectures (EWADA), co-led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, is the global centre for Solid protocol research.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor of the World Wide Web, creator of the Solid protocol, co-founder and CTO of Inrupt. Solid Pods provide decentralised data sovereignty: suppliers maintain Pods with certifications, financials, and compliance records; buyers request time-limited, purpose-bound access. EWADA is a three-year programme developing Solid-based re-decentralisation architectures and privacy-preserving AI.
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt
EWADA Director, Principal of Jesus College, Professor of Computing Science. Co-founded the Open Data Institute with Berners-Lee. Former UK Government Open Data advisor. Strategic weight for government procurement adoption under the Procurement Act 2023.
Dr Jun Zhao
EWADA Research Lead, Oxford Martin Fellow. Built working Solid prototypes including the Data Terms of Use (DToU) reasoner — automated policy compliance checking within Solid. Published in Nature Machine Intelligence, CHI, and WWW on child-centred AI and decentralised data governance.
Jesse Wright
DPhil student, Solid Lead for the Open Data Institute's stewardship of the Solid Project (ODI assumed stewardship October 2024). Direct bridge between Oxford research and ODI governance.
Professor Ruben Verborgh
Visiting Fellow from Ghent University. World-leading expert in decentralised Web technologies, pivotal to Solid ecosystem development since 2015.
Advisory board candidates (Shadbolt, Berners-Lee), CTO office or core technical team (Jun Zhao), Solid architecture lead (Jesse Wright). EWADA provides proven implementation patterns, policy reasoning frameworks, and government/enterprise adoption research.
Multi-Agent Systems
Professor Michael Wooldridge
Ashall Professor of Foundations of AI, Senior Research Fellow at Hertford College. The world's foremost authority on multi-agent systems with over 450 publications. Co-Editor-in-Chief of Artificial Intelligence Journal (the field's oldest journal, est. 1971). Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellow (2021). Former Head of Oxford CS Department (2014–2021). Key research areas: automated negotiation (theoretical foundation for commercial approaches like Pactum AI), coalition formation, game-theoretic reasoning about computational economies, computational complexity in multi-agent systems. Currently hiring two postdoctoral researchers for "Rethinking Multi-agent Systems in the Era of LLMs". Awards: ACM/SIGART Autonomous Agents Research Award, ACM Fellow, AAAI Fellow, Lovelace Medal (BCS), AAAI/EAAI Outstanding Educator Award.
Scientific advisor on agent architecture, negotiation protocols, and multi-agent governance. His work on cooperative concurrent games, mechanism design, and Nash equilibrium provides formal foundations for SIGNET agent interactions.
Cryptography, Protocol Security & Distributed Trust
Professor Bill Roscoe
Fellow of University College (since 1983), former Head of Oxford CS Department (2003–2014). 40+ years of research in concurrency, automated verification, applied cryptography, and payment protocols. Founded the University College Oxford Blockchain Research Centre (2018) and Oxford-Hainan Blockchain Research Institute. Co-founded The Blockhouse Technology Ltd (TBTL) and Chieftin Lab. Key research: bootstrapping ad-hoc networks (secure trust between unknown parties — directly applicable to supplier onboarding); regtech; post-quantum security; digital identity and KYC protocols.
Professor Gavin Lowe
Department of Computer Science. Developed the Casper/FDR toolset for formal security protocol analysis. Discovered attacks on multiple standardised protocols (ISO/IEC 9798, ISO/IEC 11770). Any SIGNET procurement protocol can be formally verified before deployment.
Advisor on cryptographic architecture and distributed trust. TBTL is a potential collaboration partner. Roscoe's regtech focus aligns with SIGNET's rules-as-code engine. Lowe's protocol verification ensures cryptographic soundness of ZKP, FHE, and VC implementations.
Supply Chain & Procurement Operations
Steve New
Associate Professor at Saïd Business School, Fellow of Hertford College. Decades of research on procurement and supply chain management. His theory of provenance in supply chains — understanding origin, journey, and integrity of goods and information — provides the conceptual framework for OCDS/PEPPOL integration. Published "The Transparent Supply Chain" in Harvard Business Review. Extensive public sector experience with UK NHS and CIPFA.
Professor Matthias Holweg
Professor of Operations Management, leads the Technology and Operations Management group at Saïd. Co-founded oxethica, a startup focused on AI governance and compliance — directly relevant to SIGNET agent governance. Research on AI regulatory compliance, ethics-based audit protocols, and digital transformation.
Procurement domain advisors ensuring SIGNET designs reflect real procurement complexity. New's provenance theory and public sector experience are critical for government adoption. Holweg's oxethica provides practical AI compliance tooling.
Internet Governance & Data Regulation
Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford Internet Institute. Serial entrepreneur (founded Ikarus Software 1986). Author of Big Data (NYT/WSJ bestseller) and Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data. His work on ex-ante risk assessment of data uses maps directly to SIGNET's policy-as-code approach. Advises governments, businesses, and NGOs on information society issues.
Professor Helen Margetts
Professor of Society and the Internet, former OII Director (2011–18). Authored Digital Era Governance — the foundational work on how digital technologies reshape public administration. Frameworks for technology-policy-society intersection inform SIGNET positioning under the Procurement Act 2023.
Governance architecture advisors. Mayer-Schönberger's ex-ante risk assessment model and Margetts's digital government expertise bridge academic rigour with policy pragmatism.
Commercialisation — Oxford Science Enterprises
Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE)
University-partnered venture firm, raised £850M+, backed 100+ spinouts. Unique model: Oxford University is a shareholder; OSE receives half of the university's equity stake in spinouts. Evergreen patient capital (not limited partnership). Investment range £50K–£25M. Relevant portfolio: PQShield (post-quantum cryptography), Mind Foundry (AI/software). Support: 12-month academic sabbaticals, Entrepreneurs-in-Residence network, co-investment syndication (£1B+ attracted).
Oxford University Innovation (OUI)
The university's commercialisation arm. Created 31 new companies in 2020/21. Oxford companies secured £1B+ external investment in 2020/21. Highest university patent filer in the UK.
Potential investment partner and structural support for the NewCo pathway. Portfolio companies (PQShield, Mind Foundry) could be technology partners or early SIGNET participants.