In memoriam: Ross Anderson (1956-2024)

It is with great sadness that the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) must share the news that our longtime EPRG Associate Researcher and dear friend and colleague Professor Ross Anderson FRS, FRSE, FREng, Professor of Security Engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, passed away on 27 March.

Ross was a longtime advocate of academic freedom and digital rights and a founder of the field of security engineering (what others refer to as cybersecurity). His book on the subject, Security Engineering (the 3rd edition of which was published in 2020), is the standard text on the subject. Although only a small part of his many interests, he did work on a range of topics related to energy and sustainability, and was a regular attendee at our EPRG conferences, gave a salutary talk on cyber hacking generation equipment and was a passionate (and prophetic) critic of the failings of the UK smart meter rollout.

Apart from his love of bagpipes, he had a passion for policy and governance at both the university level and at the national level and he always made his case in clear, impassioned and heartfelt terms. We will miss him very much and we extend our condolences to Ross’ wife, family and his many friends.

Read a longer obituary written by a close colleague for Communications of the ACM.