Rob Procter is Professor and Director of MeRC, having previously been Director of Research at NCeSS. Before that, he was leader of the Social Informatics Cluster, a multi–disciplinary research group within the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh.

His research focuses on socio–technical issues in the design, implementation, evaluation and use of interactive computer systems, with a particular emphasis on ethnographic studies of work practices, computer-supported cooperative work and participatory design.

Rob has published over 150 academic papers and has held grants from EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, DTI, JISC, and EU. He is PI on the ESRC-funded e-Infrastructure for social sciences project, the JISC-funded Barriers to the take-up of e-Infrastructure Services (eUptake) and RIN-funded Use and Relevance of Web 2.0 Resources for Researchers, Co-I on the JISC-funded National e-Infrastructure for Social Simulation, the MRC e-Science programme NeuroGrid project, the EPSRC usability and e-Science programme ADVISES project, the JISC-funded MEMETIC and StORe projects, and the EU funded AVROSS project. He also coordinates with Tom Rodden the joint NCeSS-eSI theme on the adoption of e-Research Technologies.

Rob is editor of the Health Informatics Journal and is a member of the editorial boards of Interacting with Computers, the Enterprise Information Management Journal, the International Journal of IT Standards and Standardisation Research, and the International Journal of Distributed Systems and Technologies. He is a co-editor of special issues of the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work on Collaboration and e-Research (2006), CSCW and Dependable Healthcare (2006) and the Social Science Computing Review Journal on e-Social Science (2009).