Tom Crick


Tom Crick is a British computer scientist and engineer, a science and technology policymaker, and a senior civil servant. He is Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Professor of Digital Society and Policy at the University of Bristol. His work spans national computing education reform, digital and data policy, and the engineering and governance of large-scale AI-enabled systems in public services and government.

Early life and education

Crick was raised and educated in Wheatley, Oxfordshire. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in computer science at the University of Bath, having been sponsored through his undergraduate degree by ARM. His doctoral research, funded by the EPSRC, considered superoptimisation by developing practical strategies for generating provably optimal code for program optimisation using answer set programming.

Career

After a period as a postdoctoral researcher on ALIVE, a European Commission FP7-funded project at the University of Bath, Crick was appointed lecturer in computer science at Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2009, before being promoted to full professor in 2016. He was recognised as a UK National Teaching Fellow in 2014. He moved to a research chair at Swansea University in 2018, becoming Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Civic Mission from 2021-2023. He was appointed Professor of Digital Society and Policy at the University of Bristol in January 2026.

Government service

In November 2023, Crick joined the UK Government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport as Chief Scientific Adviser. In this role, he provides scientific and technical leadership across the department's policy areas, advising ministers and senior officials on science, technology and artificial intelligence. His responsibilities include supporting the design, governance, assurance and deployment of complex socio-technical AI-enabled systems across areas such as media, culture, the creative industries, sport and civil society, and contributing to cross-government scientific advisory structures that promote high-quality, evidence-based policymaking.

Professional service

In 2017, Crick was elected Vice-President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT for a three-year term. He has also served in a number of senior elected positions in the Association for Computing Machinery, including Vice-Chair of ACM Europe Council and a Member-at-Large of ACM Council.
Crick is editor-in-chief of The Computer Journal, published by Oxford University Press, and an editor of the Wales Journal of Education, published by University of Wales Press.

Computing education and digital skills

Crick has been involved with the reform of the school-level science and technology curriculum in Wales since 2010. In 2013, he was appointed by the Welsh Government to chair an independent review of the ICT curriculum in Wales. Crick concluded that the existing curriculum did not adequately equip learners with the digital skills required for contemporary education and employment. This work treated digital education and skills provision as a large-scale socio-technical system, integrating curriculum design, assessment, teacher capability and supporting digital infrastructure.
From 2015–2016, Crick chaired the development of the bilingual Digital Competence Framework in Wales, which elevated digital competence to the same statutory position as literacy and numeracy in the new Curriculum for Wales. It outlined how schools could incorporate student-centred digital competency into their local curriculum.
He then led the development of the Science & Technology strand of the new Curriculum for Wales in 2017. His efforts united the traditional sciences with computer science and design & technology. The new curriculum was published in January 2020 and started phasing in for all schools in Wales from September 2022 onwards. Crick was also appointed Chair of the National Network of Excellence in Science & Technology, a £4m Welsh Government strategic investment which focused on supporting STEM teachers in partnership with higher education institutions.
Crick also chaired Qualification Wales’ 2018 review of ICT sector qualifications, which reported that they were outdated and needed considerable reform, resulting in new GCSE and A-Level qualifications in Digital Technology from 2021 onwards.

Non-executive and board-level roles

Crick was a non-executive director of Swansea Bay University Health Board from 2017 to 2024, an inaugural Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales from 2018 to 2022, and a non-executive director of Industry Wales from 2021 to 2024. Alongside being a Vice-President of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, he was a trustee from 2013 to 2020. He has previously been a trustee of the British Science Association and the Campaign for Science and Engineering., and was appointed a trustee of Cumberland Lodge in 2024. Crick has been a non-executive director of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water since 2017.

Awards and honours