John S. McCaskill (born 1957) is an Australian chemist who works on the evolution of information processing in a wide variety of fields ranging from theoretical biochemistry to novel computation to artificial life and microrobotics.

in 1982 as a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, McCaskill joined the group of Nobel prize-winner Manfred Eigen at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany.

[9] and optical DNA Computing systems based on magnetic beads in microfluidic reactors [10] McCaskill led an international initiative to investigate evolvable artificial chemical cells with an EU-funded project, PACE, one of the earliest projects to explore a bottom-up approach to create an artificial living cell [11] [12] [13] .

McCaskill's current work includes modeling the essential interplay of self-organization and evolution in life-like chemical and electronic systems, and exploring the potential of electronic-chemical hybrid Information Technology based on these properties.

He has produced over 100 scientific publications, taught courses and supervised PhD theses in disciplines ranging from chemistry, physics and biology to computer science, and his multidisciplinary work straddling theory and experiment has been recognized in invited lectures at international conferences around the world.