Dr Andy Harter CBE, DL, FREng, CEng, FIET, FBCS, CITP, FLCM, FRSA, read Mathematics and Computer Science at Fitzwilliam College. As a graduate student at Corpus Christi and the Computer Laboratory, he investigated designs for three-dimensional integrated circuits. His doctoral thesis was published by Cambridge University Press and is still available having been recently reprinted!

Since then he has been engaged in industrial research and development for communications systems, and was director of research and engineering of the AT&T Cambridge Laboratory. He has contributed extensively and significantly in the fields of distributed systems, ubiquitous and context aware computing, user-interface design and thin-client systems most notably VNC, a system that lets one person take over another person’s computer screen to help them fix problems. The software is now on over a billion devices, on more different kinds of computer than any other application and is even an official part of the internet. The software is also embedded in Intel Chips, Apple Desktops, Google Software, mobile phones and cars.

Andy is a Fellow of the Computer Laboratory involved with graduate student research programmes, and lectures to final year undergraduates. He is the founder and CEO of RealVNC, a highly successful Cambridge software company which in 2013 won its third Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in three years. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2010, he received the Academy’s Silver Medal, and in 2013 the MacRobert Award, the most prestigious UK prize for engineering and commercialisation. In 2016 he was awarded the Faraday Medal, the highest honour of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and gave the 2018 Turing Lecture. He is a trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, The Computer History Museum and Britten Sinfonia. He is a Chair of Cambridge Network and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen’s Birthday Honours.  He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County and was appointed by HM The Queen as the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire for 2018-19.

At St Edmund’s Andy has been a Tutor, Director of Studies in Computer Science, Senior Treasurer of the May Ball and Family officer. He is married to Lily and they are kept busy with their young family. Other interests include golf, rowing, gardening and music, particularly the piano and organ, for which Andy is a Fellow of the London College of Music. He also enjoys travel, and has ventured in a single-engined light aircraft to Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada (to within a few hundred miles of the North Pole), North and South America (crossing the Andes, rounding Cape Horn and visiting the Falkland Islands).