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Professor
Tom Crick
MBE FLSW FAcSS FBCS FIET
Professor Tom Crick in May 2023
BornJanuary 1981 (age 43)
Oxford, UK
EducationWheatley Park School
Alma materUniversity of Bath (BSc, PhD)
AwardsBCS Lovelace Medal (2023)
Hugh Owen Medal (2023)
IET Achievement Medal (2022)
Scientific career
InstitutionsSwansea University
Cardiff Metropolitan University
University of Bath
ThesisSuperoptimisation: Provably Optimal Code Generation using Answer Set Programming (2009)
Websitewww.swansea.ac.uk/staff/thomas.crick/

Tom Crick MBE FLSW FAcSS FBCS FIET (born 1981) is a British interdisciplinary computer scientist. He is Professor of Digital Policy at Swansea University and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Crick has led major reforms to the Welsh science and technology curriculum.

Early life and education

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Crick was born in Oxford.[1] His mother worked in education and his father in technical manufacture.[1] He attended Wheatley Park School, where he fell in love with physics, mathematics and chemistry. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Bath, both in computer science. His doctoral research considered superoptimization, and practical strategies to generate provably optimal codes using answer set programming.[2] Code optimisation is synonymous with performance enhancement in modern compilers.[3] Superoptimisation generates optimised codes that searches over a large parameter space of possible instructions.[3] Crick worked with researchers at Microsoft Research to develop use cases for superoptimisation.[3]

Career

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Crick was appointed lecturer in computer science at Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2009. Alongside his research, he became an advocate for computer science education.[3] Here he was recognised as a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow in 2014. Crick has been involved with the reform of the Welsh science and technology curriculum since 2011. In 2012 he was an inaugural member of the National Digital Learning Council of the Welsh Government, who appointed him to co-chair an independent review of the computing curriculum.[4][5] When computer science was left out of the Welsh curriculum, Crick argued that Welsh schools were being left out of the digital revolution.[6]

He chaired the 2016 Digital Competence Framework,[7] which elevated digital competence (the skills, knowledge and attitudes required to be confident in the use of technologies) to the same standing as literacy and numeracy. It outlined how schools could incorporate digital competency into their provision.[8]

Crick oversaw the science and technology learning strand of the new Curriculum for Wales in 2017.[5] His efforts united traditional sciences (physics, chemistry and biology) with computer science and design technology. The Curriculum was published in 2020 and launched in 2022.[9] He became Chair of the Welsh National Network of Excellence in Science & Technology, which focused on supporting science teachers in collaboration with higher education providers.[10]

He supported the Royal Society reviews of computing education[11] (Shut down or restart? and After the Reboot) which described young people's attitudes to computing curricula and outlined how more efforts were needed to recruit and train computer science teachers.[11] These reports contributed to the major reform of the information and computer science curriculum and resulted in £84m funding from the Department for Education and the National Centre for Computing Education. Crick contributed to Qualification Wales’ review of ICT sector qualifications, which reported that qualifications were outdated and needed considerable reform.[12]

In 2017 he was elected Vice-President of the British Computer Society.[13] He served as an inaugural Commissioner on the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales from 2018 to 2022.[14]

He joined the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as Chief Scientific Adviser in 2023.[15]

Awards and honours

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Professor Tom Crick MBE". Archives of IT. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  2. ^ "Superoptimisation : provably optimal code generation using answer set programming | WorldCat.org". search.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Tom Crick | Software Sustainability Institute". www.software.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  4. ^ "NDLC - Hwb". hwb.gov.wales. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  5. ^ a b "The future of science and technology in the Welsh education system - Swansea University". www.swansea.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  6. ^ "Wales' schools 'left behind' in digital age, experts claim". BBC News. 2014-05-23. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  7. ^ Crick, Tom (2022-07-07). "Rethinking Digital Competencies in the New Curriculum for Wales". ITiCSE'22. ACM: 635–635. doi:10.1145/3502717.3532145. ISBN 978-1-4503-9200-6.
  8. ^ "Digital Competence Framework: your questions answered". 2018.
  9. ^ "Curriculum for Wales - Hwb". hwb.gov.wales. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  10. ^ "Tom Crick - Swansea University". www.swansea.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  11. ^ a b "Computing education | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  12. ^ Wales, Qualifications (2018-12-10). "Delivering Digital: ICT qualifications are outdated and need fundamental reform". FE News. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  13. ^ a b "Nominations now open for BCS Lovelace Medal – Prof Tom Crick tells us what the award means to him". www.computingatschool.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  14. ^ "Professor Tom Crick MBE". Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  15. ^ a b "Professor Tom Crick MBE". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  16. ^ "Hugh Owen Medal 2023". The Learned Society of Wales. Retrieved 2024-09-13.
  17. ^ Sciences, Academy of Social. "Fellows". Academy of Social Sciences. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  18. ^ "BERA announces 2020 Public Engagement and Impact Awards". www.bera.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  19. ^ "Tom Crick". The Learned Society of Wales. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  20. ^ "Dr Tom Crick". Advance HE. Retrieved 2024-09-13.
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