Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Science
Queens University Belfast

Bio

Chris Johnson works on the development of safety-critical systems; where errors in software can lead to loss of life.   His research helps to increase confidence in technical innovation, for example, allowing autonomous vehicles to operate alongside conventional road traffic and pedestrians without increasing the risk to the public.  He has worked with NASA, the US Air Force and a range of European governments.   In 2020, he was appointed as expert witness for the public inquiry in the Grenfell Tower fire.

TEDx Talk Title

What does success look like?

Overview of TEDx Talk

One of the things that distinguishes the successful is that they are often students of failure.  They have an ability to imagine what success looks like even when defeat is staring them in the face.  These general ideas have had a profound impact on modern approaches to engineering where ‘counter factual arguments’ provide means of imagining what success looks like, when systems fail.  However, these traditional approaches are insufficient to cope with novel computational architectures including those associated with machine learning and Quantum technologies.