John Fitzgerald is a specialist in the engineering of resilient computing systems, particularly in rigorous analysis and design tools. He is perhaps most closely associated with the Vienna Development Method (VDM). A particular area of interest is predictable dynamic resilience: the design of systems that reconfigure in response to threats while retaining predictability.

John is currently seconded to the Deploy project, leading its work on achieving and demonstrating dependability through the deployment of formal methods in four industry sectors. He initiated work on resilience-explicit computing in the ReSIST European Network of Excellence on Resilience in Information Society technologies, a concept taken up in the two projects that he jointly leads within the UK Software Systems Engineering Initiative SSEI. His newest project on the use of formal models to support collaborative modelling and simulation in the design of embedded systems (DESTECS), started in January 2010.

John studied formal proof (PhD, Manchester Univ.), before joining Newcastle, where he worked on formal design techniques for avionic systems with British Aerospace. He went on to study the potential for industrial application of formal modelling (specifically, VDM and its support tools) as a SERC Fellow and later as a Lecturer at Newcastle. He returned to the University in 2003, having established the design and validation team at Transitive, a successful SME in the embedded processor market.

John is Chairman of FME, the main European body bringing together researchers and practitioners in rigorous methods of systems development. He is a Fellow of the BCS, a member of the ACM and a member of the new EPSRC College from 2010.