Lionel Tarassenko

Professor Tarassenko is a leading expert in the application of signal processing and machine learning to medical systems, with a strong track record in translation to clinical medicine. His work has had a major impact on the identification of deterioration in acute care and on the self-management of long-term conditions using mobile communications.

He has been a pioneer in developing early warning systems for acutely ill patients. The machine learning system, Visensia, which he designed for patient monitoring was the first such system to gain FDA approval. It has led to improved patient outcomes documented in clinical trials and more than 150 licences have been sold to hospitals in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Professor Tarassenko has been Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Oxford since 1997 and directed the Institute of Biomedical Engineering from its opening in April 2008 to October 2012. He is the current Head of the Department of Engineering Science (Dean of Engineering). He is also Professorial Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Population Health. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1996, when he was also awarded the IEE Mather Premium for his work on neural networks, to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2000, and to a Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013. He received a British Computer Society Medal in 1996 for his work on neural network analysis of sleep disorders. His research on jet engine health monitoring was awarded the Rolls-Royce Chairman’s Award for Technical Innovation in 2001 and the Sir Henry Royce High Value Patent Award in 2008. His work on mobile phones for healthcare was awarded the E-health 2005 Innovation Award for “best device to empower patients”. He received the 2006 Silver Medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering for his contribution to British engineering leading to market exploitation and he won the Institute of Engineering & Technology IT Award, also in 2006. In 2010, he gave the prestigious Vodafone lecture on m-health at the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Centenary Lecture on Biomedical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Professor Tarassenko has been a founder director of four spin-out companies from the University of Oxford, the latest being Oxehealth Limited (webcams for medical and activity monitoring) in September 2012. He is a non-executive director of the University of Oxford’s wholly-owned technology transfer company, Oxford University Innovation Limited.