Patrick Hudson read Psychology at Edinburgh University and obtained his doctorate in 1977 from the Faculty of Science of St. Andrews University. In 1986 he was appointed in the Department of Psychology of Leiden University and was also appointed as a part-time full professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maastricht until 2001. He has over 180 publications in scientific journals, books and conference proceedings.

He is one of the world’s leading authorities on the human factor in the management of safety, in the oil and gas industry, in commercial aviation and in medicine. He was the Project Leader of the Tripod Research program for Shell International Exploration and Production since 1986 and was involved in developing Shell’s approach to safety management systems after the Piper Alpha disaster. He currently leads Shell Group’s Hearts and Minds research program on the development of safety culture in the Oil and Gas industry that won the Energy Institute Communication award in 2005. He also advises BP, where he is Distinguished Advisor to the Safety Culture and Leadership program, and ENI-Agip. He consults regularly to the OGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers).

He was the Safety Keynote speaker for the Society of Petroleum Engineers conference on Health, Safety and Environment in the Oil and Gas industry in Caracas in 1998 and again delivered the keynote address on safety in the oil and gas industry for the same conference in Calgary in March 2004.

His involvement with aviation includes working with companies such as British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Malaysian and Singapore Airlines, and Airbus. He is a regular advisor to the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) based in Montreal and works with the Dutch, US, Australian and Canadian aviation regulatory authorities. He gave the keynote address on Safety Culture in Aviation to the Airports Council International in December 2005 in Budapest.

In medicine he has concentrated upon bringing his experience in industrial risk management to hospital practice, especially in the area of medication error. He has delivered keynote addresses to medical conferences in Sydney, Basel, Utrecht and Amsterdam. He was recently one of the authors of the report by Shell, for the Netherlands Minister of Health, on patient safety in hospitals.

He is increasingly asked to advise other industries, including the mining industry where he has advised in the United States in 2005 and gave the keynote address to the New South Wales Mining Council in Sydney in 2006 and the West Australian Chamber of Minerals and Energy in Perth in 2007. In 2005 was also appointed to the safety oversight board of the European Union’s main nuclear research reactor.

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