Derek Robert McAuley FREng is a British scholar who holds the position of Professor in the field of Digital Economy at the School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham. He leads Horizon Digital Economy Research, an interdisciplinary research institute supported by the RCUK Digital Economy programme. He served as an expert advisor to the House of Lords European Union Committee on online platforms and was the Chief Innovation Officer when the Digital Catapult was established. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a member of the UKCRC, which is part of the computing research expert group of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the British Computer Society.
Academic career
McAuley began his PhD in computer science at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, where his thesis focused on Protocol Design for High Speed Networks. From 1990 to 1995, he worked as a lecturer at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In 1995, he became a professor in computer science at the University of Glasgow, a role he held until 1997. In 2009, he joined the University of Nottingham as Professor of Digital Economy and director of the Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub.
Career in industry
In July 1997, McAuley returned to Cambridge as a co-founder and deputy director of the Cambridge Microsoft Research facility. In 2002, McAuley founded Intel Research Cambridge and served as director until 2005. After that, he worked as a staff architect at Intel's Systems Technology Lab in Oregon. In August 2006, McAuley joined the start-up company XenSource as a senior director. XenSource was later acquired by Citrix. In 2007, McAuley became the chief technology officer at Netronome. He held this position until December 2008.
Research
McAuley's current research areas include ubiquitous computing, computer architecture, networking, distributed systems, and operating systems. He is also interested in topics that connect different fields, such as ethics, identity, privacy, information policy, laws, and economics in a digital society. He has spoken about the dangers of using technology without careful consideration. A complete list of his recent work can be found on the University of Nottingham website.