Professor Wendy Hall, a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative, has been made a Dame in the New Year Honours List.

The professor of computing at Southampton University is one of the first and foremost computer scientists to undertake serious research in multimedia and hypermedia, and has been a significant influence in the development of digital libraries and the semantic web.

She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for services to science and technology".

Professor Hall is the elected president of the US Association for Computing Machinery, and until July last year was senior vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

She is a member of the prime minister's Council for Science and Technology, a founder member of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council and a former president of the British Computer Society.

Among other honours, Douglas Caster, chief executive of Ultra Electronics Holdings, has been made a CBE "for services to the defence industry".

His company is involved in battlespace IT systems and equipment intended to improve situational awareness and provide quicker and more reliable command and control and the ability to synchronise military firepower.

And Nicholas Buckland, a former senior manager in the UK IT industry, has been made an OBE for "services to technology and innovation".

Buckland is chairman of Tamar Science Park and managing partner of an IT headhunting organisation, management consultancy and sponsorship management consultancy.