Jonathan Bowen
Short biography

From 1995 to March 2000, Bowen was a lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, The University of Reading, where he led the Formal Methods and Software Engineering Group. Previously he was a senior researcher at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory Programming Research Group where he worked under the guidance of Sir Tony Hoare, FRS. Between 1979 and 1984 he worked at Imperial College, London as a research assistant, latterly in the interdepartmental Wolfson Microprocessor Laboratory. He has been involved with the field of computing in both industry (including Marconi Instruments, Logica and Silicon Graphics Inc.) and academia since 1977. His interests include formal methods, safety-critical systems, testing, the Z notation, provably correct systems, rapid prototyping using logic programming, decompilation, hardware compilation, software/hardware co-design, the history of computing and online museums. He holds an MA degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University.

Bowen won the 1994 IEE Charles Babbage Premium award and managed the ESPRIT ProCoS-WG Working Group of 25 European partners (1993-1997) on Provably Correct Systems. He has produced over 290 publications including 14 books, and has served on over 85 programme committees. He is the Chairman of the Z User Group and a member of the IEEE (including its Computer Society) and the ACM. In 1997, he was Conference Chair of the 10th International Conference of Z Users (ZUM'97, University of Reading, UK), Honorary Chair, workshop presenter and invited speaker at the 1st Museums and the Web Conference (MW97, Los Angeles, USA) and an invited speaker at the 3rd International Conference on Reliability, Quality and Safety of Software-Intensive Systems (ENCRESS'97, Athens, Greece).

During the summer of 1999 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU/IIST), Macau. In September 1999 he was the Publicity Chair of the World Congress on Formal Methods (FM'99, Toulouse, France), attracting over 500 delegates, the largest formal methods conference ever held. He also produced two books in 1999 on High-Integrity System Specification and Design and Industrial-Strength Formal Methods in Practice, both in the Springer-Verlag Formal Approaches to Computing and Information Technology (FACIT) series.

During 1999-2000 he guest edited two special issues of the Museum International journal on Museums and the Internet. He also contributes an Internet column to the magazine New Heritage. He joined the School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics (SCISM) at London South Bank University as Professor of Computing in March 2000. During 2001 he received the Freedom of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the 100th Livery Company in the City of London. In 2002, Bowen was elected Chair of the British Computer Society FACS Specialist Group on Formal Aspects of Computing Science and Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. At the EVA 2003 London conference, Bowen was the keynote speaker on Web Access to Cultural Heritage for the Disabled. In 2004, he was invited to be a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS).

From 2001 to 2005, Bowen was a co-investigator on the EPSRC FORTEST Network on Formal Methods and Testing. He is now an investigator on the EPSRC VSR-net Network on the Verified Software Repository (2005-2008). In 2007 he will be the Conference Chair of the IEEE SEFM 2007 Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods.