Theme Co-Lead for Digital Health, Ageing Innovation and Inclusion and Director of the National Innovation Centre for Data
Paul Watson FREng FBCS CEng PhD is Director of the UK’s National Innovation Centre for Data, Professor of Computer Science at Newcastle University, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. He also directs the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cloud Computing for Big Data. After a BSc and PhD at Manchester University, he began his career there as a lecturer before moving to industry (ICL) to design parallel database servers. In 1995 he joined Newcastle University where his research and teaching has focussed on scalable data engineering. From 2009-15 he directed the UKRI Social Inclusion for the Digital Economy Hub that tackled social exclusion by designing digital technologies to help people and communities, including older people and those with disabilities. Professor Watson is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Engineer. He received the 2014 Microsoft Jim Gray eScience Award.