Martyn Thomas has worked in computing since he graduated as a biochemist in 1969. In 1983 he founded Praxis, a software engineering company that pioneered the use of mathematically rigorous software engineering. He was a partner in Deloitte Consulting from 1992 to 1997, with worldwide responsibility for advanced software engineering and addressing the Y2K Millennium Bug. He set up Martyn Thomas Associates in 1997 to provide very senior consultancy and expert witness services.

Martyn has worked closely with universities, on research projects and as a visiting professor at Oxford, Bristol and Aberystwyth. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Hull, Edinburgh and City University, London. In 2007 he was awarded a CBE for services to software engineering.

Martyn is Vice-President for External Affairs at the Royal Academy of Engineering and chairs the IT Policy Panel for the IET. He has decades of involvement in the ethical issues of surveillance, marketing, data mining and Big Data, and he believes that “anonymised personal data” is an oxymoron.