Name:John Fitzgerald

Bio:

John is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Computing, where he works on the rigorous model-based engineering of software and cyber-physical systems. He studied formal proof in Computing (PhD, Manchester University.), before joining Newcastle University, where he worked on design techniques for avionic systems with British Aerospace in the 1990s. He went on to study the potential for industrial application of such techniques as a SERC Fellow and later as a Lecturer. Stepping out of academia, he established the design and validation team at Transitive, a successful SME in the embedded processor market, before returning to the University in 2003 as Reader and later Professor.

As a researcher, he was a lead participant and principal investigator in international and transatlantic projects in system dependability and proof technology, and now mainly works on the foundations, methods, tools and pragmatics of collaborative (multi-paradigm) modelling techniques, especially in relation to cyber-physical; systems and digital twins. He was the Chair of FME for 13 years.

John served as Newcastle University’s Director of Research in Computing, Head of its School of Computing until 2022, and then Dean for strategic projects in Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing. John has served in a range of university leadership roles, including as an elected University Senator, member of Promotions Committee and as the founding chair of the university’s IT project governance group. He became an Emeritus Professor of Computing in 2025.

Country:United Kingdom

Affiliation:Newcastle University

Research interests:Model-Based Systems Engineering, Formal Methods, Digital Twins, Cyber-Physical Systems, Systems of Systems