Maciej Koutny is a Professor of Computing Science in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University. He received his MSc (1982) and PhD (1984) in Applied Mathematics from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. In 1985 he joined the then Computing Laboratory of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne to work as a Research Associate. In 1986 he became a Lecturer in Computing Science at Newcastle, and from 1994 to 2000 he held an established Readership at Newcastle Univerity.

His research interests centre on the theory of distributed and concurrent systems, including both theoretical aspects of their semantics and application of formal techniques to the modelling and verification of such systems; in particular, model checking based on net unfoldings. He has also investigated non-interleaving semantics of priority systems, and the relationship between temporal logic and process algebras. Recently, he has been working on the development of a formal model combining Petri nets and process algebras as well as on Petri net based behavioural models of membrane systems.

He is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Conferences on Application and Theory of Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency(http://www.daimi.au.dk/PetriNets/), and a member of the IFIP Working Group 2.2 on Description of Programming Concepts. He serves as an editor of the LNCS Transactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency (ToPNoC), and the Scientific Annals of Computer Science journal.

He has been a Visiting Professor at Xidian University, China, University of Evry, France, and University Paris 12, France.

His Programme Committee chairmanship includes: ICATPN'01, ACSD'08 and CHINA'08.

He is the scientific co-director of the 5th Advanced Course on Petri Nets to be held in 2010.