Links between industry and education are important to us in ensuring that we graduate students who are equipped to make the greatest possible impact in the workplace as well as ensuring that our research programmes are both relevant to but also informed by problems that are currently facing industrial partners.

Our External Advisory Board will offer advice on our current and proposed activities, and our strategic direction. It will provide us with the opportunity to consider plans for re-invigorating and restructuring our undergraduate degrees and teaching; our ‘Impact‘ stories for the next research assessment exercise (the Research Excellence Framework); and the direction of research student training and the role of industrial placements.

For enquiries to the External Advisory Board please contact Steve Marchant.

Andrew Bud (Chair), founder and former CEO and Executive Chairman of mBlox.

Additionally Chair of the MEF. Chaired the Consortium on Digital Energy for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and is a non- Executive Director of Passiv Systems. Is a Fellow of the IET and delivered the 2009 Appleton Lecture.

Dr Andrew Herbert, former Chairman at Microsoft Research.

Previously Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix Systems Inc, before founding Digitivity Inc to develop a product to enable for secure deployment of Java clients for business-to-business applications. Also a Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering.

Dr Jason Kingdon, Chairman of Blue Prism.

A leading UK-based technology entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Searchspace, one of Europe’s most successful and fastest growing technology companies, and an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award holder.

Dr Reza Hazemi, Associate Partner at IBM.

Over 15 years track record as an enterprise architect. Strong technical, strategy, solution design and delivery background. Also published two books and several papers aroun collaborative learning.  

Dr Philip Bonhard, User Experience Architect at Accenture.

Ten years of combined industry and academia experience in User Experience Design, Human Computer Interaction and Usability. Industry experience includes government agencies, media, telecommunications and high tech clients.

Dr Geoffrey Taylor, President & CEO of SAS.

Heads up the Academic Programme in UK and Ireland for the global industry leader in Business Analytics, SAS. Holds several global positions within SAS and maintains a high-level interest in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) agenda.

Dr Richard Wheeldon, Senior Developer, Cisco.

Security specialist working for Cisco’s London-based ScanSafe organization. Contributed to the UCL Malted project, has worked on novel techniques for web search and navigation and previously worked for security firm Geoquip and news agency Reuters.

Prof Sir John O'Reilly, Vice Chancellor of Cranfield University.

Previously Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, has held posts as a Head of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Systems in the University of Wales, Bangor,  and was Chair of Telecommunications at UCL.

Dr Paul Phillips, Director at Causata.

A pioneer and experienced entrepreneur, in 2000 founded Touch Clarity, a software company that developed the online content targeting platform that was to become the platform of choice for the largest consumer Financial Service companies, including American Express.

Ben Laurie, Software Security Engineer at Google.

Founding director of The Apache Software Foundation, a core team member of OpenSSL, a member of the Shmoo Group, a director of the Open Rights Group, Director of Security at The Bunker Secure Hosting, Trustee of FreeBMD, a committer at FreeBSD.

Jane Butler, formerly of Cisco.

Between 2001 and 2005 Chaired the 6NET project which prepared IPv6 for readiness to scale up the Internet for millions of new users, in addition has worked on IP mobility projects and has supported bringing the Internet to new users in Central Asia and Africa.