Professor Jon Platts

Professor Jon Platts is the Dean of Cardiff School of Technologies at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Professor of Autonomous Systems. Jon took up this role following careers in the UK Royal Air Force and industry research and development. He has had commercial success with his own company Muretex, winning significant, nationally competed, research grant funding; including Innovate UK funding for Robotics and Autonomous Systems. He has international contacts and reach, having proposed and chaired 2 European research action groups over 8 years and been invited to deliver a NATO lecture series on autonomy. Jon was the Head of Autonomy for QinetiQ for 13 years, shaping the direction of research programmes and co-ordinating multi-organisation teams (from QinetiQ, Dstl, BAE Systems, Thales UK, the Military and Academia) and multi-disciplinary teams. In his current role Jon leads the ambitious multi-million pound Cardiff School of Technologies development. The School will focus on areas such as data science, cyber security, AI and Electronics and Systems engineering. Jon holds a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bradford, an MSc in Aerosystems Engineering and a PhD, both from Loughborough University. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of both the Institution of Engineering and Technology the Institution of Measurement and Control.