BBC design engineer Benjamin Sheppard has been named the winner of the Royal Television Society’s Young Technologist of the Year Award.
Sheppard is a self-taught design engineer who has been creating websites, web tools and digital services since the age of 12, going on to specialise in eCommerce for the last 10 years.
In 2022, he started working with the BBC to develop a suite of broadcast graphic elements, which became an entire framework of redevelopment. He has also worked on the European Broadcasting Union’s initiative to standardise HTML5 graphics.
Chair of the RTS Young Technologist of the Year Award Jury, Terry Marsh, said: “Benjamin is a highly impressive and inspiring young talent who in just two years has profoundly impacted the offering of one of the country’s leading broadcasters, the BBC. The insight and skillset he possesses for eCommerce and development, alongside his input with the European Broadcasting Union, is something that particularly resounded with the Jury.”
Sheppard added: “It is an honour and a privilege to win such a prestigious award and to be named Young Technologist of the Year 2024. I look forward to continuing my work with complex web-based broadcast graphics, and implementing new processes to help the industry to progress.”
YouView TV’s Connor Webster was named runner-up and receives the Coffey Award for Excellence in Technology.
