Prof. Brian Randell

PositionEmeritus Professor, and Senior Research Investigator
E-mail
Telephone+44-(0)-191-222-7923
Fax+44-(0)-191-222-8232
MailSchool of Computing Science,
Newcastle University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
United Kingdom
OfficeRoom 1107, Claremont Tower
My earliest work, during the period 1957-1964 while I was English Electric, was on compilers. This led to the book: Algol 60 Implementation. (Co-author L. J. Russell). Academic Press, London, 1964.

I then joined IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. where, with an intervening year during 1965-66 in California, I worked on high performance computer architectures (the ACS Project), then on operating systems and system design methodology. During this time, and shortly after I returned to the UK to became Professor of Computing Science at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, I was co-editor of the reports on the two NATO Software Engineering Conferences.

In 1971 I set up the project that initiated research into the possibility of software fault tolerance, and introduced the "recovery block" concept. Subsequent major developments included the Newcastle Connection, and the prototype distributed Secure System. I have been Principal Investigator on a succession of research projects on system dependability funded by the Science Research Council (now Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council), the Ministry of Defence, the European Strategic Programme of Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT), and the European Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme. Most recently I have performed the role of Project Director for CaberNet (the IST Network of Excellence on Distributed Computing Systems Architectures) and for two IST Research Projects, MAFTIA (Malicious- and Accidental-Fault Tolerance for Internet Applications) and DSoS (Dependable Systems of Systems). Subsequently I was involved with the RODIN IST project, and the ReSIST IST Network of Excellence.

My current computing science research continues to be focussed on Dependability (for example on failure analysis) and, to a lesser extent, on the History of Computing.

I was a founder-member of IFIP WG2.3 (Programming Methodology) and am a founder-member of IFIP WG10.4 (Dependability and Fault Tolerance). In 1979 I helped found MARI (Microelectronics Applications Institute) and in 1993 I was involved in setting up the Northern Informatics Applications Agency, both of which flourished and did some excellent work for a number of years.