Sir Alan Wilson FBA FAcSS FRS

Sir Alan Wilson

Position

Director, Special Projects

Bio

Sir Alan Wilson FBA, FRS is an Honorary Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute (where he was Chief Executive from 2016-2018 and Director, Special Projects, until 2022). He is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL (where he was He was Professor of Urban and Regional Systems from 2007 – 2018). In recent times, he has been Director of Research at The London Interdisciplinary School, Director of Research at the UCL Institute of Finance and Technology, and a non-executive director of the Financial Services Culture Board. He has been Executive Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute and Chair of the Home Office Science Advisory Council.

Research interests

 In his research, as a mathematician and geographer, he works on the science of cities, building computer models that have applications in both planning and commercial sectors. His most recent book, Being interdisciplinary, was published by UCL Press in 2022. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1991 to 2004 when he became Director-General for Higher Education in the then DfES. From 2013-2015, He was Chair of the Government Office for Science Foresight Project on The Future of Cities. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society and was knighted in 2001 for services to higher education.