Jim Paterson is the Head of Department for the Department of Computing. His research activities relate to computer science education research, focusing on issues in teaching and learning of introductory programming and program comprehension, and on curricular issues associated with work-based learning and cloud computing. Areas of expertise include software engineering, non-relational data storage and data engineering. He received his BSc and PhD in Physics from Glasgow University, and worked previously as a Research Physicist at IBM Research, Cambridge University and Strathclyde University, and as a Software Engineer.