An independent body for trusted digital systems
MATDS recognizes outstanding practitioners across the field of trusted digital systems - on the basis of evidence and peer judgment.
The Meret Association for Trusted Digital Systems was founded with the support of Meret Solutions and is governed independently. Its mission is to advance the practice of reliable, secure, privacy-respecting, and consequential digital systems - and to recognize the people who build them to that standard.
The Association confers two forms of recognition: open Professional Membership and, by peer election only, Fellowship. No recognition is ever sold: admission and election are decided solely on the record.
Recognition decisions are made solely by the Association. At least two-thirds of the Selection Committee and at least two of every three Expert Reviewers are external to Meret Solutions, and no Meret Solutions officer signs a credential.
How the Association is run
Governance Board
Ratifies the procedural integrity of each election and approves the Regulations. It does not re-judge technical merit.
Selection Committee
Five to eleven voting members who elect Fellows by a two-thirds vote. At least two-thirds are external to Meret Solutions, serving under published terms of reference.
Membership Office
Administers Professional Membership applications, renewals, and the public registry.
Expert Reviewers
Each candidacy is assessed by senior practitioners in the relevant section, appointed for that panel.
Organization and independence
The Association is organized so that recognition is judged by independent peers, never granted by any single interest. The bodies that confer recognition and the quotas that keep them independent are fixed in the published bylaws.
Governance Board
Ratifies the integrity of each election process. Does not re-judge technical merit.
Selection Committee
Elects Fellows by a two-thirds vote.
At least 2 of 3 external to Meret Solutions
Expert Reviewers
Independently evaluate each Fellow candidate against the indicators.
At least 2 of every 3 external per candidate
Membership Office
Admits Professional Members and maintains the public registry.
At least two-thirdsof the Selection Committee's voting members are external to Meret Solutions.
At least two of every three Expert Reviewers assigned to a candidate are external to Meret Solutions.
No sponsor employee votes on a candidate affiliated with that sponsor.
A sixty-year engineering tradition
The Association did not begin in a vacuum. It inherits a sixty-year engineering tradition of building digital systems for the highest-stakes work - systems trusted because the evidence said so, not because of who built them. The line runs from the LINC, one of the first interactive personal computers (1962), through the early procedurally-invariant interactive systems engineered at the University of Wisconsin - work founder John Greist helped pioneer in 1973 - to Epic Systems, co-founded out of that same Wisconsin lineage and today among the most widely deployed software platforms in the United States. The principle held at every step, and the Association now carries it into every field: a system earns trust through evidence and validation, not authority alone.
Ten technical sections
The Association's work spans the breadth of trusted digital systems. Each Fellow is elected within one section.