About Peter Ladkin

Peter Bernard Ladkin grew up in England, moved to California to study and then to work, and after brief sojourns in Germany, Switzerland, Scotland and France is Professor of Computer Networks and Distributed Systems at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, as well as Director of the England & Wales company Causalis Limited, and CEO (Geschäftsführer) of the German company Causalis IngenieurGmbH, registered in Bielefeld. The Causalis companies provide services in engineered-system dependability, including safety and security. Peter has worked primarily in system safety for over two decades, as well as other aspects of software-based system dependability. His method for causal analysis of failures and accidents, Why-Because Analysis (WBA) is used worldwide by some 11,000 engineers. Causalis uses WBA as well as related methods for hazard analysis and failure modes analysis. He is active in electrotechnical-system standardisation, working with German committees on safety & security, functional safety, software safety, and statistical analysis of software, as well as the IEC Maintenance Teams for the international electrotechnical functional safety standard IEC 61508. He has also worked in software verification, distributed-system and communications verification, and symbolic AI, and dabbles in analytic philosophy as well as British Isles, Irish and American folk music for fun, enlightenment and the occasional free beer. His B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees are in various combinations of mathematics, philosophy and logic from the University of Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley. He is a British citizen, Fellow of the IET and holds a U.S. FAA airman’s certificate for single-engine land airplanes with instrument rating.