Derek Mathieson is Section Leader and principal architect in CERN’s administrative information systems. He is also a key architect of the J2EE implementation of CERN's e-Business system. He originally came to CERN as part of his Information Engineering Degree at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.

After graduating, he returned to CERN where he developed the software for some of the embedded systems that control CERN's massive particle accelerators. In his spare time in 1992 he also helped debug one of the world’s first web browsers. Later he was offered a post at the Supercollider (SSC) in Dallas, Texas, where he developed device drivers for the SONNET high-speed optical network. When Congress closed SSC, he returned to CERN where he joined the CERN Electronic Document Handling section as a developer. Since then he has moved on to lead the Section, and responsible for technology choices for Java development in the group.

Derek has been interested in Java technology since its inception, and in early 1997, he installed his first 'production' applet to perform client-side password encryption as part of a Web-based 'single sign-on' solution.

His interests include JEE architecture, Security, agile development methods, coding standards for the Java platform and snowboarding.