HSL has a new non-executive Director. Martyn Thomas joins Sue Ion, Peter Watson and Richard Stephenson as the latest recruit to the Board.

Martyn is an independent consultant software engineer with particular expertise in safety-related and other critical computer systems. He graduated as a biochemist but immediately went into computing. He founded the software engineering company, Praxis, in 1983 and sold it to Deloitte and Touche in 1992, becoming an international partner in Deloitte Consulting. He left Deloittes in 1997 to return to working for himself. He now acts as an expert witness where complex software engineering issues are involved.

He has been a non-executive director of two high-technology spin-off companies and of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He is currently a non-executive director of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education and of SOCA and a member of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council (DSAC).

Martyn chairs the IT Policy Panel for the Institution of Engineering and Technology and also works extensively with universities: he is Visiting Professor in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford and at the University of Bristol. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Edinburgh and Hull and City University, London. He was awarded a CBE for services to software engineering in the 2007 New Year's Honours.