Professor Peter Buneman, University of Edinburgh

Peter Buneman’s return to Edinburgh in 2002 was a homecoming with a major challenge: to build a world-class database research group in the UK.

British by birth, Professor Buneman had previously studied in Edinburgh and when the University made him a really good offer to return there after 24 years at the University of Pennsylvania, he felt it was time to rise to the challenge.

The much-travelled professor completed his first degree at Cambridge, his post-graduate degree at Warwick and post-doctoral work at Edinburgh. He has held visiting postings at the University of Glasgow, Imperial College and Kyoto University.

Today he is professor of database systems at the School of Informatics.

His computer science work has focused mainly on databases and programming languages.

He has received a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award and is research director of the multi-disciplinary UK Digital Creation Centre.

What made you decide to return to Scotland after more than 20 years?

Simply, it was a very supportive offer. Edinburgh is a great place for research, and Scotland is a fantastic place to work. The University of Pennsylvania was also a great place to work, but it was time for a change. my wife was thinking of returning from teaching to research, and we had kept a small property in the Highlands during the time we were away.

I maintain links with Pennsylvania, but Edinburgh offers real potential. The research here is well-known around the world, and we have plans to improve our standing further. We believe we are now the best database research group in Europe, and well within the top ten in the world.

Tell us more about what you do and how it can be applied?

The Digital Curation research team is studying how best we can look after data for current and future use. There has been a proliferation of scientific databases, and the growth of the Internet has played an important part in both making things available, but in many ways harder to find.

Databases have an increasingly important role in science as well as commerce and that is why the UK centre was created.

How is the support environment in Scotland?

The support we get is excellent, though we are somewhat top-heavy with administration. I do feel we can still cut a lot of bureaucracy in academic research – especially compared to the United States – but things are moving in the right direction.

We have good contacts with industry worldwide and with a number of scientists who are using advanced database technology. I would like to see us engage Scottish industry and government better. I am sure there are all sorts of opportunities, if only we could connect at the right level.

What do you like most about living and working in Scotland?

Although I am originally from England, Scotland has always felt like home and we describe ourselves as Scots. I think it was inevitable that I would come back, if the right challenge became available, and it did.

Scots have a great reputation around the world. It is not difficult to get people interested in coming here, and we have researchers from all over the world. They tend to report little problems settling in, and often they want to stay even after their research project or contract has ended.

Edinburgh has a great reputation as a city and Scotland is a wonderful country.

We have a good solid core of people working here and that counts for a lot when it comes to recruitment. There are plenty of examples of researchers who have stayed on either to do further academic work, or to start up businesses or find a job in industry.

That story means potential recruits are always interested in coming here, and we want the very best.

More information:

Leading Researchers: Professor Peter Buneman

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science

Edinburgh University - School of Informatics