David Lester

Dr David Lester first worked at Hawker-Sidderley Dynamics Engineering Ltd on control engineering projects, before studying mathematics at Oxford University. He then went on to study distributed functional programming first with Simon Peyton Jones at UCL and then with Richard Bird at the Oxford Programming Research Group. After two years with GEC-Marconi working as project leader for ESPRIT 415B (a highly influential and successful ESPRIT 1 project) further developing the work on distributed computation, he joined Manchester University in 1990. Since joining Manchester, he has worked in four broad fields: compilation systems for distributed systems, computer arithmetic, computer-assisted theorem proving for NASA/Boeing avionics, and more recently Chip/Compiler systems for Neural Computing. He is currently leading the Software Engineering Group of the SpiNNaker Project, which is part of the EU’s FET-Flagship “Human Brain Project”.