Professor Pete Edwards

Professor Pete Edwards

Professor Pete EdwardsProfessor Pete Edwards is Vice-Principal Regional Engagement, responsible for leading the development and implementation of a strategy for the University to make a comprehensive and effective contribution to the economic, social and cultural activity of the region.

He supports the identification of new regional development opportunities and collaborations, expanding the University’s links with business partners to ensure responsiveness to regional priorities as well as enhancing our work on entrepreneurship, start-ups, consultancy and commercialisation. He also has oversight of our commitments as a Civic University and our engagement with Community Planning.

Professor Edwards joined the University as a Research Fellow in Computing Science in 1988, moving to a Lectureship position in 1991. Since then, he has served in a number of roles including as Head of Computing Science; Head of the College of Physical Sciences Graduate School; Head of the School of Natural & Computing Sciences; and as a Senate Assessor on the University Court. He was founding Director of the Northern Research Partnership Graduate School (Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee and Robert Gordon) and between 2009 and 2016 was Director of the UK Research Councils’ Digital Economy Research Hub 'dot.rural' – an interdisciplinary research centre focussing on the transformative potential of digital technologies for rural communities in the UK and beyond.

His personal research interests span computational models of provenance, trust, transparency and accountability and the realisation of these in the context of the web, the internet of things, and autonomous systems. In his career to date, he has raised over £20M of external research and innovation funding, much of it for user-centred activities with partners from sectors including public policy, agri-food, transport, and healthcare. He regularly serves on funding panels for a variety of national and international research and innovation agencies and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Tel: +44 (0)1224 273021
Email: p.edwards@abdn.ac.uk

Personal Assistant: Will Gibb
Tel: +44 (0)1224 272099
Email: w.gibb@abdn.ac.uk