Jim Woodcock studied at the University of Liverpool and obtained a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computational Science (1977), a Master of Science in Computational Mathematics (1978), and a PhD in Computational Science (1980). From 1980 to 1984, he worked at the GEC Hirst Research Center and was promoted from research scientist to chief research scientist and GEC researcher. In 1984, he joined the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Surrey as a lecturer in Information Technology. In 1985, he joined the programming research group at Oxford University as a research assistant, collaborating with Tony Hoare and Ib Holm S ø rensen, and working with IBM Hursley to develop the CICS transaction processing system. This research was awarded the Queen's Technical Achievement Award in 1996. During this period, he served as a junior researcher at Wolfson College (1985-87) and an Atlas researcher at Pembroke College and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (1987-91). He was appointed as a computing lecturer in 1994, promoted to software engineering reader in 1997, and appointed as a chair professor in 2000. He has been a fellow at Kellogg's College, Oxford University since 1994. In 2001, he transferred to the University of Kent and in 2004, he transferred to the University of York, both serving as professors of software engineering. He has been the head of the Department of Computer Science at York University since 2012. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011.