Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread. As well as holding appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Southampton, Tim is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and founding Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, launched in 2009 to coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity. He has promoted open government data globally and is a member of the UK's Transparency Board and co-Director of the UK's Open Data Institute.