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Last updated 8th June 2026

Professor Paul Scott has an honours degree in Mathematics and an MSc in Statistics and also a PhD in Statistics under the supervision of Dr Rodney Coleman at Imperial College London. Paul also has a DSc. University of Huddersfield, with a thesis entitled "Decomposition for Geometrical Products"

Paul Scott started his career at Taylor Hobson Ltd, Leicester: a world leader in the design and development of ultra-precision metrology instruments for surface texture and form. He spent twenty six years in the research department applying mathematical ideas and concepts to surface texture and form measuring instruments both during the development of instrumentation and post development for mathematical enhancements of the metrological capabilities of instrumentation.

In 2010 Paul moved to the Centre of Precision Technologies at the University of Huddersfield, where he currently holds the Taylor Hobson Chair in computational geometry.

Paul focused his research on why algorithms in surface and form characterisation and instrumentation are quick and stable whilst others are not. Only by going back to mathematical fundamental principles is it possible to discover core factors for determining quick and substantially stable algorithms to solve problems and even to try and generalise the global solution to wider problems. Most of the algorithms he developed, usually being the first in the field, have become the de-facto standard algorithms against which algorithms developed by others are compared.

Since November 1984, Paul became interested in smart algorithms (AI). This includes: automated recognition of features in surface texture, semantically labeling these features for subsequent analytics, using category theory to model dynamic information flow in systems particularly manufacturing systems (digital twins). 

Paul is also very active in National and International Standardisation for Geometrical Product Specification and Verification (GPS). He is a core member of the BSI Committee TDW4. Paul Scott is also a leading member of ISO Technical Committee TC/213 being a founder member of its strategic group AG1, a founder member of its technical review group AG2, convenor of working group WG15 on Filtration and Extraction and also convenor of advisory group AG12 on Mathematics for Geometrical Product Specification. He was project leader for twenty three published ISO standards and is currently working on four new ISO documents.

Paul is also developing a Category Semantic Language (CSL) to create documents, such as International Standards, that can be machine: readable, queryable, and interpreted for use in future smart AI systems.