MEMBERS OF THE STRATEGIC PANEL - BCS

MEMBERS OF THE STRATEGIC PANEL 

The members of the Engineering & Technology Strategic Panel are: 

Chair 

Dr. Allan J Fox BSc PhD FREng CEng FIEE FBCS 

Members 

Bob Assirati, FBCS, FAPM, MCIPS 

Melissa Bailey, MBCS 

Professor Peter Brook, FREng FIEE 

Professor Alan Bundy, FRSE, FBCS, FAAAI, FECCAI, FAISB 

Mr Peter Craig, BSc, MBCS, CEng 

Mark Gladwyn, FBCS, CITP 

Dr Philip Hargrave 

Professor Nic Holt, FBCS CITP CEng 

Christopher Jack, BSc, CEng, FRAeS, FIEE 

Professor Cliff Jones, FREng, FACM, FBCS, FIEE 

Professor John McDermid, FBCS 

David Morriss, CEng, FIEE, FBCS, CITP 

Professor John O'Reilly, FBCS, FIEE, FIoP, CEng, CSci 

Andrew Sleigh, MA CPhys FinstP 

Dr Mark Thomas, FBCS 

Professor Martyn Thomas, BSc CEng FBCS FIEE HonDSc FRSA 

Dr Richard Westmore, BSc. Hons, D.Phil, C.Eng, FIEE 

Professor Rob Witty, FREng FBCS FIEE CEng CITP 

BCS Representatives: 

Mike Rodd FIEE FBCS CITP CEng 

Sue McNaughton, Head of Forums 

Adrian Walmsley MA CEng FBCS CITP 

Chair 

Dr. Allan J Fox BSc PhD FREng CEng FIEE FBCS 

Formerly VP Technology and Managing Director of the Nortel Networks Harlow 

Laboratory, he has spent the majority of his career undertaking R&D in IT and 

Communications. 

Originally graduating in Mathematical Physics from Birmingham University, he 

pursued a research career at the then Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (now 

part of QinetiQ) with particular emphasis on real time computing and communications 

which included early joint internet experiments with ARPA. 

A period in Information Systems postgraduate education followed when he 

established a new venture in partnership with Cranfield University. 

British Computer Society - Members of the Strategic Panel 

http://admin.bcs.boxuk.net/server.php?show=conWebDoc.1455 

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He returned to R&D with his appointment as VP Technology for Harlow Laboratories. 

Later he was given responsibility for the software programme across Nortel Networks 

worldwide. During this period he actively supported the creation of an industry based 

MSc course in telecommunications in conjunction with a consortium of London based 

Universities. 

He retired in 2000 with the honorary title of Nortel Networks Fellow Emeritus and in 

the same year was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He is a 

Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and is a Fellow of 

the IET as well as of the BCS. 

Members 

Bob Assirati, FBCS, FAPM, MCIPS 

Executive Director, Office of Government Commerce 

Bob worked in IT Management in the private sector before moving to the Inland 

Revenue, where he was Commercial Director for IT. He was Chief Executive of the 

CCTA from 1996 to 2001, and joined the OGC as Executive Director in 2001. His 

current role is Director, Customer Engagement, and he leads for OGC on IT issues. 

He is a member of the Government CIO Council, and personally supports a number 

of the Government’s larger IT programmes. 

Melissa Bailey, MBCS 

Melissa Bailey is an IT Architect and also the Sectors Technical Manager for IBM in 

Northeast Europe. She is plays an active part in the IT Architect professions within 

IBM including running the UK IT Architect Affiliates community which is specifically 

aimed at getting more people in the IT Architect profession. This includes working 

with some of the leading Universities in the UK to teach IT Architecture awareness as 

part of an module integrated into their undergraduate degrees. She is also a member 

of the British Computer Societies Engineering and Technology Strategic Panel. 

As an IT Architect in IBM Global Services, Melissa worked on a variety of projects, 

generally focusing on operational and infrastructure aspects of architecture and 

design but with a specific interest in High Availability and Mission Critical systems. 

Melissa's customers have included a wide range of Financial Markets customers. 

Melissa has a degree in Business Economics from Leicester University and is 

currently studying for a GCSE in Italian. 

Professor Peter Brook, FREng FIEE 

Capability Support, QinetiQ 

Prior to joining QinetiQ in 2005, Peter Brook was Head of the Integration Authority for 

the Defence Procurement Agency. 

Professor Alan Bundy, FRSE, FBCS, FAAAI, FECCAI, FAISB 

Professor of Automated Reasoning, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 

founder and convener of the UK Computing Research Committee and its former 

chair. Since 1971 he has been at the University of Edinburgh and was Head of 



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Division Informatics (1998 – 2001). He has written a book on the automation of 

mathematical reasoning, co-authored books on ecological modelling and the social 

impact of knowledge-based systems and edited books on artificial intelligence. He 

has been sole or joint holder of 39 EPSRC, SERC, Alvey, ESPRIT/ESRC grants and 

is the sole or joint author of over 140 published papers and books. 

Mr Peter Craig, BSc, MBCS, CEng 

UK Technical Director, LogicaCMG 

Peter was appointed UK Technical Director of LogicaCMG in 2004. Since July 2005, 

he has also been acting as a Business Director in LogicaCMG’s UK Public Sector 

business. 

Peter gained his early technical experience working for the UK Government, and in 

the aerospace industry at Rolls Royce plc, before joining what became Admiral plc in 

1984. He was a software engineer and then a project manager before moving into 

consultancy, mainly in the Finance Sector. 

He was Managing Director of Admiral’s Training business for 3 years, and then 

Projects Director of Admiral's software development and integration for four years, 

during a period of significant success and growth for the company. 

He was a Director for the Telecommunications, Energy and Commercial Sector, and 

then, following the merger with CMG plc, Sector Director for the Finance business 

and later National Director of CMG in the UK, responsible for the UK Government 

business and all Projects and Services Delivery, Quality, Business Risk Management 

and internal IT issues on the UK Board. 

After the subsequent merger with Logica plc, Peter was appointed Managing Director 

of LogicaCMG’s Space and UK Defence business before taking up his current role. 

Mark Gladwyn, FBCS, CITP 

Director of Infrastructure Services in the Cabinet Office Electronic Government 

Unit 

Mark’s previous senior posts have included Technical Director of Criminal Justice IT 

in the Home Office; Deputy Director of the Central IT Unit in the Cabinet Office and 

successively Director of Telecommunications and Director of Strategic Programmes 

at the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency. Mark has undertaken 

private sector secondments to ICL and to the Corporation for Open Systems (US). 

He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT Professional. In 

June 2000 he received the ‘Government Computing’ Award for Innovation. See 

http://www.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk/about/ 

structure/biography_markgladwyn.asp 

Dr Philip Hargrave 

formerly Chief Scientist, Europe Middle East and Africa at Nortel 

Until leaving Nortel in April 2006, Philip was Chief Scientist, Europe Middle East and 

Africa (EMEA). He was the spokesperson for Nortel’s vision of future networks and 

the key technologies that will enable them, providing a link between the company and 



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industry forums, public research and educational institutions, and governments. 

Immediately prior to taking on the role of Chief Scientist, Philip was Director, Next 

Generation Networks, leading a team with the mission of establishing a vision for the 

next generation of communications networks, de-risking the enabling technologies 

and taking them to product. 

Philip is a member of the Forward Looking Steering Panel that advises ComReg 

(Commission for Communications Regulation - the statutory body responsible for the 

regulation of electronic communications in the Republic of Ireland). He is a Fellow of 

the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics and the Royal 

Astronomical Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering 

in 1996. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Physicist and a Chartered Scientist 

and is a visiting Professor to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering 

at the University of Strathclyde. See http://www.philip-hargrave.co.uk. 

Professor Nic Holt, FBCS CITP CEng 

Systems Architect for Fujitsu Services, currently specialising in Enterprise Content 

Management and IT Security. He has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, in a 

variety of roles ranging from Research, Product Development and Technical Strategy 

to Consultancy and Solutions Development. He has extensive experience in a broad 

range of IT spheres including hardware and software design and implementation, 

business and technical architecture. 

Christopher Jack, BSc, CEng, FRAeS, FIEE 

Chief Technologist – Controls, Rolls Royce 

He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He has 

spent most of his career in engine control systems, originally mostly concerned with 

high integrity digital systems, software and civil certification of engine controls. He 

was project leader on the company's first production civil FADEC system for the 

RB211–524G, for the 747–400 and 767. He is now involved in all aspects of controls 

throughout the company. He was a member the RTCA committee which generated 

both DO-178A and 178B, the international industry guidelines for software 

development in aerospace. For two years he represented Rolls-Royce on IMG3 the 

European aeronautics industry committee working with the European Commission on 

Research funding, and chaired the committee from 1997–8. 

Professor Cliff Jones, FREng, FACM, FBCS, FIEE 

Professor of Computing Science, Newcastle Upon Tyne and Research Director for 

the School of Computing Science. Currently his own major research project is the five 

university IRC on “Dependability of Computer-Based Systems” of which he is overall 

Project Director. In 1996 he moved to Harlequin, directing some 50 developers on 

Information Management projects and finally became overall Technical Director 

before leaving to re-join academia in 1999. See http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/ 

home.php?name=cliff.jones 

Professor John McDermid, FBCS 



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Professor of Software Engineering and leader of the High Integrity Systems 

Engineering Group (HISE) within the Department of Computer Science at the 

University of York. John is a founder member of the United Kingdom Computing 

Research Committee (UKCRC) which seeks to provide leaderships to the computing 

research community in the UK. He is also active in the BCS, IET and Royal Academy 

of Engineering, seeking to improve standards in software and systems engineering. 

John undertakes a range of consultancy activities for the Government and Industrial 

clients both in the UK and overseas. He is one of the founder directors of Origin set 

up to provide consultancy services based upon the work of the HISE group. He is 

now a non-executive Director of High Integrity Solutions (HIS), a start-up company 

specialising in the production of high integrity software, using advanced methods and 

tools. See http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~jam/ 

David Morriss, CEng, FIEE, FBCS, CITP 

David was President of the BCS for 2004/5. He is currently a non-executive director 

of REX Software and a Trustee of Ability.Net. He is a Warden of the Worshipful 

Company of Information Technologists and holds several other public appointments. 

Following a period with London Transport he joined IBM as a Systems Engineer. He 

retired from IBM in 1997 after 31 years service, where he held several senior 

management appointments including Director of Business Plans, General Manager 

Software and Services and General Manager, Government Industry for IBM Europe, 

Middle East and Africa. He was appointed to the board of IBM UK Holdings in 1987. 

Professor John O'Reilly, FBCS, FIEE, FIoP, CEng, CSci 

Chief Executive, EPSRC 

Professor O'Reilly took up the post of Chief Executive of the Engineering and 

Physical Sciences Research Council in October 2001. His technical interests focus 

on Information and Communication Technologies with an emphasis on 

communication networks and applications. He is the author of some 350 journal and 

conference papers and author/editor for three books on telecommunications. He 

chairs the UK's Network Interoperability Consultative Committee (NICC) for Ofcom 

and the industry and has served as a specialist advisor to UK Government (DTI and 

the Foreign Office) and to the European Commission. A Chartered Engineer and a 

Chartered Scientist, he is a Fellow and former member of the Council of the Royal 

Academy of Engineering and past President of EUREL, the confederation of 

European Electrical Engineering Professional Societies. A Fellow of the IET, of the 

Institute of Physics and of the British Computer Society, he was the 2004–05 

President of the IEE. 

Andrew Sleigh, MA CPhys FinstP 

Group MD, Defence & Technology, QinetiQ 

Andrew Sleigh’s career has included research in sensors and machine intelligence, 

operational analysis and strategic planning, and a number of senior management 

positions. Previously, he was Managing Director, Defence Solutions for QinetiQ and 

prior to that he was responsible for the MoD's ICT strategy and programmes and was 

Co-Chair of the Cabinet Office Official Committee on Spectrum Strategy. 



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Dr Mark Thomas, FBCS 

Director, SOA Design Centres and Java Technologies, IBM 

Mark Thomas is director of Service Oriented Architecture Design Centres and Java 

Technologies at IBM's UK software development laboratory. Mark leads the IBM 

development teams who are pioneering the deployment of IBM's Service Oriented 

Architecture solutions for major clients worldwide. He is also responsible for 

delivering IBM's software developer kits for Java technology. He currently has 

business and technical management responsibility for a broad range of software 

components that provide the foundation for over a thousand IBM software offerings 

delivering on almost two dozen different hardware and operating-system 

environments, including Java technology for the WebSphere Application Server and 

IBM's e-server operating systems. 

Professor Martyn Thomas, BSc CEng FBCS FIEE HonDSc FRSA 

Independent Consultant Systems Engineer, Thomas Associates 

Martyn specialises in the procurement, acquisition and assessment of large, 

real-time, safety-critical, software intensive systems, software engineering, and 

engineering management. He also acts as an expert witness where complex 

software engineering issues are involved. He serves on the Advisory Group for the 

UK Government Foresight programme on Intelligent Infrastructure Systems. He is 

Visiting Professor in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford, and a Visiting 

Professor at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and at the University of Bristol. He 

serves on the IT policy-making bodies of both UK professional computing institutions, 

the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Institution of Engineering and 

Technology (IET). He chairs the steering committee for the UK’s major research 

collaboration in dependability, and he is the only European member of a US National 

Academy of Sciences study into Certifiably Dependable Software. 

Dr Richard Westmore, BSc. Hons, D.Phil, C.Eng, FIEE 

Consultant, R. J. Westmore Associates 

Richard is currently an independent management consultant with broad experience in 

research, product development, and operations; encompassing systems, hardware, 

and software. 

He graduated from the University of Dundee with a B.Sc. Hons in Engineering, and 

subsequently from the University of Sussex with Engineering Doctorate in Real-Time 

Computer Graphics. 

He worked with Sir Clive Sinclair in Cambridge, then moved to National 

Semiconductor in California to work on computer architecture, 

On returning to the UK he joined Nortel Networks (then STC) in Harlow, and worked 

with Nortel Networks for 13 years in a variety of senior positions and European 

locations. 

From 2002 to 2005 he was Managing Director of Panasonic Mobile Communications 

Development Europe, a company which undertook the design and development of 



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GSM mobile phones for the world markets. 

Professor Rob Witty, FREng FBCS FIEE CEng CITP 

Director of Information Systems Research Programmes, Defence Academy, UK 

Rob took up his present appointment in 2005. With 30 years’ experience in defence 

and civil applications, Rob was Chief Technology and Programmes Officer at NATS 

from 2002 to 2005. Earlier he had been the Director of Software Engineering for GEC 

and then for Marconi, having previously worked for SERC, BP, Xerox. His early 

career was in safety-critical software and systems engineering research. 

BCS Representatives: 

Mike Rodd FIEE FBCS CITP CEng 

BCS Director of Learned Society & External Relations 

Sue McNaughton, Head of Forums 

Adrian Walmsley MA CEng FBCS CITP 

Adrian has worked in the IT industry for nearly 40 years, most of the time in a variety 

of technical roles with IBM in the UK and USA. He is now running his own IT 

consultancy company, having taken early retirement from IBM at the beginning of 

2003. Prior to leaving IBM he was a practising IT architect in IBM Global Services 

and later the IBM Software Business, specialising in internet and e-business 

infrastructure, and is the author of several technical redbooks. He was also on IBM 

UK's IT architecture professions board. 

He is currently the Manager of the Engineering and Technology Forum, working as a 

consultant for the BCS. 

Within BCS he also sits on the Knowledge Services Board and is webmaster for and 

an active committee member of Oxfordshire Branch. 



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MEMBERS OF THE STRATEGIC PANEL - BCS

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