Ultrasonics and Instrumentation

Steven Freear gained his doctorate in 1997 and subsequently worked in the electronics industry for 7 years as a medical ultrasonic system designer. He was appointed Lecturer (Assistant Professor) and then Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 2006 and 2008 respectively at the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds. In 2006 he formed the Ultrasound Group specializing in both industrial and biomedical research. His main research interest is concerned with advanced analogue and digital signal processing and instrumentation for ultrasonic systems. He teaches digital signal processing, VLSI and embedded systems design, and hardware description languages at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. He has been Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferrorelectrics and Frequency Control, since 2009, and was appointed Editor-In-Chief in 2013.

David Cowell received his MEng. degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds in 2004, conducting major projects in parallel computing and embedded system design. He completed his PhD. degree with the Ultrasound Group in 2008, conducting research into advanced coding excitation techniques and excitation circuit design for industrial instrumentation and medical imaging systems. During this time he has performed extensive consultancy in instrumentation, FPGA and high-speed digital hardware design.

After working as a research consultant in measurement and instrumentation, he joined the Ultrasound Group as a Research Fellow. His main research is currently focussed on non-invasive industrial ultrasound measurement. His other active research areas include advanced miniaturised ultrasound excitation systems with low harmonic distortion for phased array imaging, ultrasound system design and signal processing.

Sevan Harput received his BSc. degree in Microelectronics Engineering and his MSc. degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Sciences from Sabanci University, Turkey in 2005 and 2007, respectively.

In 2009, he joined to the Ultrasound Group in the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds. He has worked as a research and teaching assistant in the University of Leeds and has taught DSP and DSP hardware implementation courses. His research interests include biomedical instrumentation, medical imaging and ultrasound. His PhD thesis, 'Use of Chirps in Medical Ultrasound Imaging' was submitted in December 2012. Currently his research focuses on microbubble characterization and contrast agent imaging.

James McLaughlan received his MPhys. degree from the physics department at Bath University in 2004, where he spent a year working with high power lasers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxfordshire. He completed his PhD. degree in 2008 at the Institute of Cancer Research (University of London), investigating the optimisation of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) cancer treatments through the use of cavitation. After this, in 2008 he started as a postdoctoral research assistant in the Mechanical Engineering department at Boston University (USA), where he investigated the use of light absorbing nanoparticles for cancer imaging and therapy.

He joined the ultrasound research group in 2010, where he is working on the detection and characterisation of ultrasound contrast agents for imaging and the use of microbubbles to deliver chemotherapy agents for the treatment of colorectal cancer. His areas of interest include HIFU for the non-invasive treatment of soft tissue tumours, the photoacoustic (PA) effect for imaging and temperature monitoring, optically and acoustically generated cavitation from nanoparticles, for both imaging and therapeutic applications, development of ultrasound contrast agents, drug delivery and sonoporation using microbubbles.

David M Charutz completed his Ph.D. degree in 1993 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, investigating the molecular dynamics of simple reactions in liquids. During the years 1994-5 he started as a postdoctoral research assistant in the Chemistry & Biochemistry department of UCLA (USA), where he developed molecular electronic structure algorithms based on a statistical approach. David then joined SOREQ NRC (Israel) where he serves until today as a researcher. In 2004 he joined the ultrasonic group of the NDT department in SOREQ where he worked on developing NDT ultrasonic phased-array based techniques and methods to identify and allocate cracks and flaws in various solid objects. In 2011 David became the head of the ultrasonic group in his institute. Since 2012 David is on sabbatical leave, working in collaboration with the University of Leeds Ultrasonic group. He is currently working on a phased array guided wave amplification method to be utilized in industrial NDT systems.

Gaël Léauté received his MEng. in Electronic Engineering for telecommunication from Superior Electronic Institute of Paris (ISEP) and his MSc. in Computational methods and software engineering for Digital Signal and Image Processing from Cranfield University in 2009.

He is currently in the second year of a PhD presently working as a research and teaching assistant at the University of Leeds. His research interests include non-invasive measurement using spectra analysis and advance medical imaging techniques. Currently his research focuses on Ultrasound Contrast Agent (UCAs) characterisation for therapeutic drug delivery.

Chau Vo is studying as a PhD student at the University of Leeds after completing an MSc in Embedded Systems Engineering in 2010. He received his B.Eng. and M.Eng degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from University of Technology, Vietnam, in 2000 and 2003.

During his career, he has worked on projects related to DSP, FPGA, microcontrollers, data acquisition and monitoring, audio power amplifiers, and a project in VLSI design. His current research interests include medical electronics, microelectronic design, DSP and embedded systems. He is currently pursuing his PhD studies in an industrial magnetic sensing project sponsered by Speir Hunter Ltd.

Olaoluwa Olagunju is currently a second year PhD student who joined the Ultrasound Research Group in July 2011. He received his MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Nottingham, UK in 2009. He specialized in control systems' design, instrumentation and FPGA implementation. He has also completed industrial work in control system instrumentation where he was part of a team responsible for designing automated control systems and Hardware-in-the Loop test-bench systems for companies in the Quarry industry. His MEng project title was "Investigation of Current Limitations of Commercially Available Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Testing Methods and a Systematic Study of Solutions". During his PhD, he has focused on advanced ultrasound excitation techniques for Microbubble applications and advanced ultrasound array transmit beamforming.

Robert Ingham completed a modern apprenticeship in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from UCLAN Burnley/Training 2000 in 2007. During his apprenticeship he worked as a test technician, providing quality control for fire detection systems, security systems, and audio equipment.

He received a BEng and MEng in Mechatronics and Robotics at the University of Leeds in 2012. During a summer internship in 2009, he developed a DC-DC converter for a piezo wall tapper for the Djedi Project. His BEng and MEng projects were, respectively, the development and control of a 3-bogie 6 wheel robot, and the transmission of sensor data for a 'Smart Helmet'.

Robert joined the Ultrasound research group in the fourth quarter of 2012 and is in the first year of his PhD. He is currently working within hardware design, focusing on a next generation UARP platform. His current research interests include ultrasound instrumentation, FPGA design, embedded system design, and Verilog programming.

Alessandro Perelli received his Master of Science degree in Electronic Engineering in October 2010 and his Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering in 2007, both at the Polytechnic University of Ancona (Italy). Since January 2011 he is pursuing the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering at the Department of Electronics Computer Science and Systems DEIS - University of Bologna. Since September 2012 he is a visiting PhD student at the Ultrasound group of the University of Leeds. His current research interests refer to signal processing, time-frequency analysis and warped techniques, compressive sensing, non-destructive testing. He has attended the IEEE Ultrasonic Symposium and he is an author on Journal of Smart Material and Structures, Mechanical System and Signal Processing and IEEE conference papers.

Safeer Hyder received his BEng degree in 2009 from Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Sindh, Pakistan. He started his career as a Lecturer at Sukkur IBA, Sindh. He received an MSc in Embedded Systems from the University of Leeds during 2011-2013. Throughout his studies he has worked on digital signal processing and digital design in Matlab, C++, and Verilog HDL. He is now a first-year PhD student within the Ultrasound Group at the University of Leeds. His research interests are ultrasound imaging, coded excitation, elastography and photo-acoustic imaging.

Zainab Ramy studied her Bachelors and Masters in Computer Engineering at Mosul University in Iraq, where she worked in the field of Digital Signal Processing, specifically designing and implementing discrete wavelet transform filter banks using lattice structures. She has now joined the Ultrasound group at the University of Leeds as a PhD student, researching the properties and therapeutic applications of Ultrasonics.