Prof Bill Buchanan, OBE

A Bit About Our Patron...

William (Bill) J Buchanan OBE is a Professor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Fellow of the BCS and Principal Fellow of the HEA. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cybersecurity. He has won student-voted awards for teaching excellence in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2019 and 2020. One of his most recent achievements is the creation of a Blockpass Identify Lab and which is one of the first of its type in the world, and has significant industry funding.

Bill lives and works in Edinburgh, and is a believer in fairness, justice, and freedom. His social media tagline reflects his strong belief in changing the world for the better: "A Serial Innovator. An Old World Breaker. A New World Creator."

He also has a strong belief in the power of education, and in supporting innovation from every angle. Bill currently leads the Blockpass ID Lab and the Centre for Cybersystems and Cryptography. He works in the areas of blockchain, cryptography, trust and digital identity. He has one of the most extensive cryptography sites in the World (asecuritysite.com), and is involved in many areas of novel research and teaching.

His lectures are online at http://youtube.com/billatnapier, with over 800 on-line lectures, and which has around 10K subscribers, with more than four million minutes watched. Along with this he created one of the most extensive on-line environments for schools in Scotland, and which has over 120K registered users (http://brightredbooks.net) and over one million test questions taken.

Bill has published over 30 academic books, and over 300 academic research papers. Along with this, Bill’s work has led to many areas of impact, including three highly successful spin-out companies (Zonefox, Symphonic Software and Cyan Forensics), along with awards for excellence in knowledge transfer, and for teaching. Bill recently received an ”Outstanding Contribution to Knowledge Exchange” award, and was included in the FutureScot "Top 50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World”.