Timothy Leighton

Education

Leighton was educated at Heversham Grammar School, Cumbria and Magdalene College, Cambridge where he was awarded a Double First class Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences with Honours in Physics and Theoretical Physics in 1985. He stayed on to work in the Cavendish Laboratory and was awarded a PhD in 1988 for Image intensifier studies of sonoluminescence with applications to medical ultrasonography.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Leighton was awarded Senior and Advanced Research fellowships at Magdalene College, Cambridge and the EPSRC. Leighton joined the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton in 1992 as a Lecturer in Underwater Acoustics, and completed the monograph The Acoustic Bubble in the same year. He was awarded a Personal Chair at the age of 35 and has authored over 400 publications.

He has founded and leads a research group, and two research organisations (NAMRIP and HEFUA, see below). He conducts extensive outreach activities, particularly for schoolchildren, features on radio and video, and serves on numerous national and international committees. An example lecture can be found at on the web.

The breadth of his research covers medical, humanitarian and environmental sciences, beginning with the fundamental math and ending with engineering applications. His research interests cover acoustical oceanography, antimicrobial resistance, biomedical ultrasound, carbon capture and storage, climate change, decontamination, hospital acquired infections, marine zoology, ultrasound and underwater acoustics. The citation of the 2006 Paterson Medal of the Institute of Physics states that:

He strongly champions high quality peer reviewed journal publications (as his time as Associate Dean demonstrated), but he also champions generating impact from research. Leighton strongly believes that if a technology is to help many people, it has to be deployed in sufficient numbers, and be sufficiently easy to use (no matter how complex and revolutionary the underlying science). That cannot be done if a technology remains unread in high quality published papers, or early publication prevents award of the patent that a manufacturer will need to have sufficient security to commit R&D funds by reducing the threat of them later being undercut by a reverse engineered product that was not priced to recoup R&D investment. Therefore, whilst he places high value on quality journal publications, these must form part of a publication strategy. Leighton also has a record of opening up new fields (cold water cleaning, sound in space, ultrasound in air, BiaPSS, TWIPR, passive acoustic lithortripsy monitoring etc.) in the hope of producing game changers, because he believes that incremental research in topics that the consensus of researchers and sponsors believe valuable is, in much of research, a route to only incremental advances:

Leighton's research has been funded by the Royal Society, the United States Department of Energy, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). He has also self-funded research ideas that cannot attract a sponsor – he has done this by raising funds by licensing his inventions.

Academic service

Leighton is serving or has served on advisory bodies including:

Medical and healthcare

From fundamental science publications, Leighton has invented systems for detecting bone disease (including osteoporosis). He invented devices for monitoring the efficiency of kidney stone therapy, an invention that won the 2008 ‘Medical & Healthcare’ award from ‘The Engineer’ (key collaborator: Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust). His scientific contributions are credited by industry for the manufacture of needle-free injectors for migraine sufferers (over 1 million sold). He assisted the Institute of Cancer Research with technology for tumour therapy monitoring (2010). He was a co-author of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology guidelines for foetal ultrasonic scanning, since which time 2 billion mothers and children have been scanned. He identified the mass exposure of the public to ultrasound in public spaces, and placed this in the context of inadequate current guidelines for public protection, and inadequate standards for instrumentation and procedures for measuring such exposures and the human response to them. He advises the Health Protection Agency on the safety of ultrasound and provides scientific advice to the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.

Leighton is currently developing several inventions to achieve cold water cleaning (cleaning without heat or additives), saving water, energy and cost, and making the water easier to later convert back to drinking water. When cleaning, cold water without chemicals might also be required by the target (transplant organs, microchips etc.) which could not withstand heat or chemicals. Most of these 'cold water cleaning' inventions are currently confidential as a result of patenting restrictions, but StarStream is securely patented in many countries. It cleans down a stream of water, and in tests cleans whilst saving up to 80% water and electricity costs, } with no additives so that the water can more easily be returned to drinking water. One use is to reduce infections by improving food and hand cleaning: as New Scientist quoted Leighton:

StarStream won the Institution of Chemical Engineers Award for "Water Management and Supply"; the Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, and the S-lab Product of the Year 2014. Multidisciplinary teams have shown that StarStream is effective at cleaning bone prior to transplant, removing bacterial biofilms, cleaning skin and decontaminating surgical steel of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease prion. It has also removed marine antifouling from ship hulls. Although safe for hands, StarStream proved to be more effective than an ultrasonic cleaning bath (which is too hazardous for immersion of hands) in a side-by-side comparison for cleaning crushed 'leaves on the line' contaminant from railway track, a problem which costs the UK rail network £50 million each year.

The managing director of Ultrawave Ltd., John Melvile, described StarStream as:

Leighton is trying to raise funds to bring infection prevention worldwide using StarSaver. He says:

Humanitarian

Leighton invented radar for the detection of buried explosives, hidden bugging devices, and for the location of buried catastrophe victims (in avalanches, mudslides, collapsed buildings etc.). He invented the world's only sonar system capable of detecting objects in bubbly water (key, for example, to protecting services, cargo and aid shipping in conflict zones). Mine detection is often an ongoing problem long after conflict has reduced and civilians return to former conflict zones. (Key collaborator: Paul White). He has worked on a number of systems for detecting objects buried in the seabed, including one now sold by Kongsberg for archaeological and civil engineering purposes. With his research associate Dr Craig Dolder, he is inventing ways of producing clean water from waste in both industrialised and Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

Environmental

Leighton invented technology used by environmental agencies and oil and gas companies to monitor for undersea gas leaks from pipelines, and from methane seeps, by their acoustic emissions. He invented systems to assess leakage from Carbon Capture and Storage Facilities, and to assess the amount of methane in the seabed. This is important to assess the potential for leaks from these reserves into the sea and (eventually) the atmosphere (in the seabed, there is probably more carbon trapped in methane than there is in all other forms of conventional fossil fuel, yet as a greenhouse gas methane is 20 times more potent per molecule than carbon dioxide, so assessing how much is in the seabed, and how much leaks into the atmosphere, is a key task). He made measurements of key parameters in the transfer of atmospheric gas between atmosphere and ocean. This is important for climate change modelling, because over 1000 million tonnes of atmospheric carbon transfers each year between atmosphere and ocean. He worked as part of the team investigating whether man-made sounds can adversely affect benthic species (marine life that inhabits the seabed). Such species have been overlooked in studies on how man-made sounds affect whales, dolphins and fish: benthic species find it far harder to relocate away from adverse sounds than do these other more mobile species. Furthermore, benthic species play a key role in the health of the marine sediment, turning it over and preventing it stagnating, and are key to the health of coastal marine environments. (Key collaborator: Paul White).

Other inventions

By predicting the soundscapes of other worlds and how these could best be exploited using acoustic devices, Leighton developed devices for planetaria to use when teaching about other worlds, and showed how careful calculation was needed to avoid mistakes when using acoustic sensors on other worlds. He identified key uses of sound by whales and dolphins. He invented sensors for assist safety procedures in the world's most powerful pulsed spallation neutron source ($1.3 billion) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US.

Leadership

In addition to founding and leading his research group, after standing down as Associate Dean for Research for his Faculty in 2015 (where he achieved his stated aim of making his Faculty 'top for power' in engineering in the national REF research census) Leighton founded two organisations, which he leads:

NAMRIP

The Network for AntiMicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention (NAMRIP) is a Strategic Research Group with the sole aim of combatting AntiMicrobial Resistance (AMR) and promoting infection prevention. As Leighton said at NAMRIP's 2016 conference:

He set up NAMRIP to search for the required solution, with particular emphasis to finding an alternative to the oft-cited route of simply funding drug companies to produce more antibiotics. As quoted by New Scientist, he explained:

In its first year, NAMRIP has grown to 170 members: engineers, chemists, microbiologists, environmental scientists, veterinary and human medics, clinicians who contribute to international and national antibiotic guidelines for specified conditions, experts in food, ethics and law, crucially networked with economists, geographers, health scientists and experts from other social science disciplines to provide a truly joined up approach to AMR and Infection Prevention (offsetting the loss of diversity in pharmaceutical industry research teams). With almost weekly publications and successes, NAMRIP has delivered in terms of conducting research, engaging with industry to roll out solutions to society, and engaging with the public and policymakers to conduct outreach, education and dialogue. In 2016 Leighton began a plan to roll out NAMRIP's mission world-wide, particularly to Low/Middle Income Countries with not-for-profit interventions, through the formation of Global-NAMRIP.

HEFUA

Health Effects of Ultrasound in Air (HEFUA) has been formed to map the increasing use of ultrasound in public places, and to investigate whether or not this increase is having adverse effects on some humans (following an investigation which revealed that the use of ultrasound in public places is increasing, and that current guidelines are inadequate).

Outreach

Leighton has contributed to outreach and the encouragement of young men and women to engage, and possibly follow careers in, science and engineering, with school visits, science fairs, and appearances on TV and radio.

Awards and honours

Leighton has been awarded the following medals and distinctions:

Fellowships

Leighton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. His nomination reads:

Leighton was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2012 for his services to Engineering and society.

He was also elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) in 2000, Fellowship of Institute of Acoustics in 1999, Fellowship of the Acoustical Society of America in 1998, and Fellowship of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1988.