She studied for an undergraduate degree in computer science at Thames Polytechnic, spending her third year on an industrial placement at CERN, graduating in 1986.

She studied for her PhD in the field of artificial intelligence at the University of Greenwich,[6] and was awarded her doctorate in 1993.

She has been a Council Member of PITCOM, the Parliamentary IT Committee, responsible for communications, Past President of EQANIE (European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education), the National HE STEM Programme and an ICT thought leader for the University of Cambridge International Examinations.

[10] In 2015, Bacon became a Principal Fellow of the HEA [1] and was identified as the 35th Most Influential Women in UK IT 2015,[11] by Computer Weekly.

e-learning, serious games, software engineering, crisis management, affective computing, cybersecurity, e-Health, personalisation.