Prof Simon Maskell

I obtained my MEng, MA and PhD from Cambridge University Engineering Department, where I focused on signal processing.

I moved from Cambridge to work for DERA which then became QinetiQ. During my time at QinetiQ, I became the technical manager for a team focused on Bayesian algorithms for extracting information from dynamics streams of data. While many of the applications related to defence and security, I also worked on projects related to, for example, broadcast enhancement, insurance, transport and the pharmaceuticals. I moved to Liverpool in 2013 to become a Professor of Autonomous Systems and now lead the signal processing group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics.

My research centres on developing techniques that allow the scalable application of numerical Bayesian inference to difficult problems, typically involving small datasets and large amounts of prior knowledge. I’m particularly focused on applying such techniques in time-evolving contexts and using the output from those processes to inform sequential decision making. I am director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Distributed Algorithms, the use of a combination of future computing and next-generation data science to solve difficult real-world problems. I am also on the board of two start-ups and hold a Dstl-funded Royal Academy of Engineering chair in Information Fusion.

I have an extensive network of collaborators in industry and government as well as a keen interest in ensuring that the output of research can be applied by such stakeholders. Having previously been president, I serve as secretary for the Board of Directors of the International Society of Information Fusion, the international professional body representing researchers who work on combining data from different sources to inform important decisions.