Roland Ibbett

Roland Ibbett FRSE FBCS EngSMIEEE
==Early Life and Work==
Roland Ibbett was born in Burton upon Trent, England, where he attended Burton Grammar School(1952-1959).
From there he went on to study at the University of Manchester, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Physics in 1962.
During his third year he took advantage of an option that allowed Physics students to spend most of their third year taking courses in the Electrical Engineering Department and this
significantly influenced his long-term career.
He had also developed an interest in astronomy, however, and took up an offer to move to the University of Hull with James Ring, newly appointed as Professor of Applied Physics.
Here Ibbett worked on designing and implementing digitisation techniques in astronomical spectrophotometry,
, for which he was awarded an M.Sc. from the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. from the University of Hull.
In 1966 he returned to Manchester to join the newly formed Department of Computer Science.
Here he soon became involved in a project led by Tom Kilburnto build a successor computer (eventually known as MU5) to the Atlas computer.
Ibbett was a major contributor to the design and implementation of the hardware of the MU5 processor.
MU5 was fully operational by the mid 1970s and Ibbett accepted an invitation to spend four months as a Visiting Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh,
USA. Here he became involved with the ISPS project at CMU and on returning to Manchester continued to work with colleagues
 at CMU as an early user of the UK link to the ARPANET.
In 1985 he was appointed to a chair in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh.
==Research and Teaching==
Ibbett's research and teaching interests centred mainly on the architecture of high-performance computers
.
In addition to his involvement in the MU5 project at Manchester, about which he has written extensively
, he was also involved in the design and implementation of an experimental vector processor
and a local area network
.
At the University of Edinburgh his main interests involved the use of HASE, a Hierarchical computer Architecture design and Simulation Environment
developed under his direction.
HASE has been used as a virtual laboratory for research in computer architecture and as a teaching/learning environment
He personally developed a number of HASE models for student demonstrations and exercises and was principal investigator on research projects to create and use
simulation models of RAID systems
 and the UKQCD computer architecture
.
Ibbett retired from the University in 2006 but continued to create HASE models of historically interesting computers as a way of preserving knowledge about their principles of operation,
e.g. the Manchester University "Baby", Atlas and MU5 computers, the CDC 6600 and the Cray 1
.
==Professional Contributions==
From 1987 to 1995 Ibbett was Head of the Department of Computer Science and from 1994 to 2000 was a University Vice-Principal.
He was instrumental in setting up the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC).
He has contributed to the work of numerous professional bodies involved in offering degree level examinations,
in accrediting computing degrees and in supporting academic staff in computing.
These include the BCS Board of Examiners (1974-1988, Chair 1982-1987)
the BCS Qualifications and Standards Board and the Engineering Council Registration Standards Committee (2007-2013).
He was the first Chair (1994-96) of the Conference (now Council) of Professors and Heads of Computing and Chair (2000-2011) of the Higher Education Academy Information and
Computer Sciences Subject Centre Advisory Board. He was Chair (2010-2017) of the Accreditation Committee of EQANIE, the European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education, and Vice-President of EQANIE (2015-2017).
Category:English people
Category:1941 births
Category:British scientists