Meet our speaker

Sidney Dekker is Professor and founder of the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Born near Amsterdam, Sidney has lived and worked in seven countries across four continents. He holds a couple of Dutch Master’s degrees in Psychology, and a Doctorate in Cognitive Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University, USA.
He is a sought-after safety-culture advisor to ANSPs worldwide, and was an early supporter of CANSO’s efforts to stem criminalisation of ATCOs. Over the past three decades, Sidney has counselled controllers and surviving pilots in the wake of some of the world’s most high-visibility accidents and air disasters, and he has assisted investigations with technical human factors expertise. He has recently become a professional mediator, a volunteer Chaplain and crisis intervener, and he is now, besides his day job, pursuing a second Doctorate (in Theology) on Bonhoeffer’s Ethics.
An avid piano player as well as a pilot who learned to fly at age 14, he has been flying the Boeing 737 for various airlines on the side.
Sidney is bestselling author of over twenty books, including The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error, and he has co-directed high-impact documentaries including ‘Safety Differently’ and ‘Just Culture.’
A waypoint north of Amsterdam was recently named SIDNI.
Stanford has ranked Sidney among the world’s top 1% most influential scientists since Isaac Newton. More at sidneydekker.com