Security and defence Archives - Archives of IT

Dr Andrew Rogoyski

Dr Andrew Rogoyski is Innovation and Partnership Director of the AI Institute at the University of Surrey. He has experienced several winters where interest in AI has nearly evaporated but is excited to now be in a summer of interest as big tech pours fortunes into development, some fruitful and some futile.

In March 2023 he tried to co-sign the letter from 1,000 people calling for the suspension of development in the AI tool ChatGPT but couldn’t as the server crashed. Among those who did manage the sign the letter were Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak.

Sir Julian Young

A delight in taking apart and rebuilding his bicycle highlighted Sir Julian Young’s bent for engineering at an early age. “An engineer is someone who is perpetually restless and never content with how things are,” he says. “You are always wanting to do better.”

Would-be engineers also need to be competent at numbers, score good marks in science, and be prepared to keep up-to-date with technology. But as an engineer you have “a job with opportunities for life,” Sir Julian says. It has certainly proved that way for him. Money was tight when he wanted to study aircraft engineering at university, so he applied for and won sponsorship with the RAF.

Since then, he has enjoyed a 40-year career as an aircraft engineer with the RAF. His experience spans a huge range of aircraft and technology, from the Mk1 Chinook and 1980s’ bombs dropped by gravity used to damage Port Stanley airfield in the Falkland Islands to today’s leading-edge F-35 fighter jet, with its robotics, smart weapons and AI. Most recently, he was Director General Air within the Defence Equipment & Support organisation in the Ministry of Defence and the RAF’s Chief Engineer.

Sir Julian is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Governor of Bath College and a Trustee of the RAF Charitable Trust. He was awarded a KBE in 2020, a CB in 2013 and an OBE in 2000. In 2021, he became the 140th President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. His ambition while in post is to push as hard as possible on addressing the challenges of sustainability and climate change.

14 December 2021

Geoff Squire OBE

Geoff Squire OBE spent 50 years in the UK IT industry, from machine code to $Bn companies. Geoff learnt arithmetic and the value of pounds, shillings and pence at an early age doing sums upside down over his father’s shoulder. University was never an option but interest in numbers led on to jobs in programming and thence to growing roles in ICL.

He is perhaps most famous for establishing Oracle in the UK with an opportunistic pitch to Larry Ellison. Subsequently Geoff led Veritas to a Y2K $75Bn market cap. In recent years Geoff has focused, with his wife Fiona, on their grant giving charity and he serves as Chairman of Give as You Live Ltd, a technology company dedicated to raising money for UK charities.

Colin Knight

Colin Knight learned the value of failsafe technology early in his career, developing algorithms for the release of munitions from RAF “V Bombers”. This focus on non-stop reliability has remained his priority through a wide-ranging career spanning financial trading in the City post Big Bang, the revolution in mobile communications, predictive modelling of networks and risk management. Colin has worked extensively across Europe, Asia Pacific and the US, including a spell in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Given his time again, he says he would favour roles at US-based companies because they are more innovative, entrepreneurial and financially rewarding.

Colin is a past Master of the Information Technologists Livery Company. But his proudest achievement has been his charitable activities deploying IT to improve the lives of sick and disabled children and their families. Work must be fun, he insists — you will never get a successful team with unhappy members.

Cyril Hilsum CBE

Cyril Hilsum is a British physicist and material scientist, who carried out research on infra-red devices and semi-conductors, and played a key role in the development of flat-panel liquid crystal displays. He was awarded numerous prizes from several institutions: he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an honorary member of the American National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Max Born Prize in 1987 and the Faraday Medal in 1988. He was awarded the CBE in 1990 for services to the Electrical and Electronics Industry. In 2007 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal for his many outstanding contributions and for continuing to use his prodigious talents on behalf of industry, government and academia to this day

Professor Brian Collins CB

Professor Brian Collins CB spent his career in the public service, in the private sector and as an academic. He met his first computer programming the speed of nuclear bomb blasts and went on to work at the defence research establishment at Malvern. He devised night goggles and tank night-time battle systems. At the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) he helped re-orientate it to the new role after the cold war. Working in the private sector he amalgamated the IT systems of the world’s largest legal firm. He worked on integrating technology to government policy and then transferred to academia.

Dr Robert (Bob) Nowill

Bob Nowill has had a career as an IT security expert at the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) and at BT. He helped respond to the change of stance of GCHQ from combating the USSR in the cold war to the more asymmetric challenges faced today. He now works to try to bridge the skills gap between the pool of talent available to combat cyber security issues and the need for more expertise to achieve higher security

Dr Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor has had a varied career, much of it working on sensitive systems. He did pioneering work on speech recognition for use by pilots and helped the Metropolitan Police to “join up” its databases. He went on to become the IT champion of the UK’s joint intelligence committee within the cabinet office.

13 November 2018

Dr Louise Bennett

Dr Louise Bennett is an IT Security Expert with more than 30 years’ experience in the industry. Her first experience of computing was modelling weather using London University’s Atlas computer.

She worked at the Ministry of Defence as an operations analyst and one of her first roles involved programming in BASIC and Fortran to develop a flying training programme for the RAF.

In the late 1980s she became R&D Director as well as IT Director and moved to Thorn Security where she led early work in biometrics with fingerprint, hand, iris and voice recognition and also worked at AEA Technology (the privatised Atomic Energy Establishment).

As the chair of the security forum at the British Computer Society, she has an excellent bird’s eye view of what’s going right, and wrong, with the nation’s security

16 October 2018

Alan Pollard

Alan had an Army career spanning 32 years and rose to the rank of Brigadier. After the Army Alan spent the next 10 years as an IT Consultant working with a number of multinational blue-chip companies such as EDS, Boots, British American Tobacco, H&W Shipyards, BAE Systems & Walkers Foods. He was President of the BCS 2008-09.

30 January 2018