Personal Chair: John Thompson

Professor John Thompson has been made Personal Chair in Signal Processing and Communications.

Professor Thompson received his BEng and PhD degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 and 1996, respectively.

From July 1995 to August 1999 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Edinburgh, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Nortel Networks.

Since September 1999 he has been a lecturer at the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. In October 2005, he was promoted to the position of Reader there.

His research interests focus on signal processing algorithms for radar and communications systems. He has published approximately 200 papers to date, and has co-authored an undergraduate textbook on digital signal processing.

Currently he is the deputy academic lead of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council/industry project on “Green Radio”. This project has ambitious goals to reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of future mobile telephone networks.

Professor Thompson has also contributed more widely to the academic community. He was a technical programme co-chair for Globecom 2010 conference in Miami, one of the premier international communications conferences in the world.

He has recently been elected to the Board of Governors of the Communications Society of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for the period 2012-2014.