Professor John A. McDermid OBE, FREng, FBCS, FIET, FHEA became Professor of Software Engineering at the University of York in 1987. His work covers a broad range of issues in systems, software and safety engineering. He became Director of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation-funded Assuring Autonomy International Programme in January 2018, focusing on the safety of robotics and autonomous systems. 

He has acted as an advisor to government and industry for several decades, including Rolls-Royce and the MoD in the UK; Siemens and the Fraunhofer in Kaiserslautern in Germany; and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and NASA in the USA. He became an advisor to Five in 2018, with a focus on safety of autonomy. He was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of the HSE in October 2019.

He has been actively involved in standards development, including work on safety and software standards for civilian and defence applications; he currently chairs the BSI Connected Autonomous Vehicles Standards Advisory Board. 

He is the author or editor of six books and has published about 450 papers. He became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2002 and was awarded an OBE in 2010.

John has had two periods as Head of Department; his first tenure ran from 2006 - 2012 and he again served in the role 2016 - 2017.