Professors Trevor Bench-Capon and Paul Dunne pay tribute to Professor Mike Shave, Head of the Department of Computer Science during the 1980s, who passed away on Friday 21st October in the Countess of Chester Hospital:
“Mike Shave was appointed as the first professor of Computer Science at Liverpool shortly after the department was created in 1982. His time as Head of Department, throughout the 1980s, saw a notable increase in staff numbers (at a period when British universities faced significant financial pressures) and international standing. A recognised authority in the then fledging field of Knowledge Based Systems,
Mike oversaw the formation of core groups working in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering. Mike led the Knowledge Processing Research group, and built up productive research links with both Unilever and Shell.
He also held a series of grants (Mekas, Aide de Camp, and Kraft) which played a crucial role in sustaining and focusing the group, introduced a number of post-docs to the Department (including Ray Paton and Frans Coenen), and led to some very well cited publications. The Department’s involvement in ontologies was founded on this work.
As well as such traditional sub-fields of Computer Science, Mike always recognised both the need to enhance under-represented areas and be open to new initiatives.
Without his initial support it is doubtful whether, for example, the Department’s current strength in the Theory of Algorithms would have come about. In the same way Mike was always open to new developments in Computer Science and encouraged – both in terms of research activity and its input to teaching provision – developments in areas as diverse as high-performance parallel computing, biological paradigms of computation, hypertext, data mining, and novel graphics algorithms.
On retirement Mike became the first Emeritus professor of Computer Science.”
The funeral will be held on Monday 14th November at 2:40pm at Chester Crematorium Chapel, Blacon Avenue, Chester CH1 5BB