Michael Batty is currently Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chairman of the Management Board of the Centre for Applied Spatial Analysis (CASA). He has been at UCL since 1995 where he founded, directed, and built up CASA as an interdisciplinary centre focused on the development of mathematical and computer methods in geographical information science, urban and regional modelling, and the scientific theory of cities.
His career began in the University of Manchester in 1966 where he was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in Town and Country Planning. He then spent 10 years at the University of Reading as Research Assistant, Lecturer and Reader in Geography, before moving to the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (now the University of Cardiff), in 1979, where he was Professor of Town Planning. During this time he acted as Head of Department, and Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Design. In 1990, he moved to direct the NSF National Centre for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo) where he was a Professor of Geography. He has held several visiting appointments in computing, engineering, planning, and geography at the Universities of Illinois, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Bristol, and Michigan, and is currently a Visiting Distinguished Professor at Arizona State University, and an Honorary Professor at Cardiff University.
He has received various honours for his work. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir George Back Award by the Royal Geographical Society for “contributions to national policy and practice in planning and city design”, the Association of Geographic Information Award for Technological Progress (1998) and for Innovation (2002). He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1982 and made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001 when he was also elected to the Academy of Social Sciences. He was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2004 for “services to geography”, and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009.