Timothy Leighton


Timothy Grant Leighton is the Professor of Ultrasonics and Underwater Acoustics at the University of Southampton. He is the inventor-in-chief of Sloan Water Technology Ltd., a company founded around his inventions.
He is an academician of three national academies. Trained in physics and theoretical physics, he works across physical, medical, biological, social and ocean sciences, fluid dynamics and engineering. He joined the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research 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.

Education

He was educated at Heversham Grammar School, Cumbria and Magdalene College, Cambridge where he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos and awarded a double first class Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in physics and theoretical Physics in 1985, obtaining a PhD in 1988 at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
Following his PhD, he was awarded senior and advanced research fellowships at Magdalene College, Cambridge funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Early career

He joined the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research 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.

Research

He founded and leads two research organisations he founded, is a director and inventor-in-chief of Sloan Water Technology Ltd., and talks extensively to schoolchildren, the public, and on radio and video.
His research covers medical, humanitarian and environmental sciences, beginning with the fundamental mathematics 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, fluid dynamics, ultrasound and underwater acoustics.
Such fields as cold water cleaning, sound in space, ultrasound in air, BiaPSS, TWIPR, and passive acoustic lithortripsy monitoring, pushed pioneering research into game-changing technology. as opposed to incremental research that is published but falls short of societal benefit:
He worked as part of the team investigating whether man-made sounds can adversely affect benthic species. 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.
With other teams he developed methods to assess which fish species are most at-risk from man-made noise in the oceans, and quantified such noise from shipping. Turning the problem on its head, he worked with other teams on how to use sound as 'underwater acoustic scarecrows' to guide fish away from regions of man-made danger. These might occurs, for example, where industry exacts cooling water from rivers used as migration paths of endangered species.

NAMRIP and [|Global-NAMRIP]

The Global Network for AntiMicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention, is a multidisciplinary research team of hundreds researchers and end users, across four continents, including 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 antimicrobial resistance and infection prevention. As Leighton said at NAMRIP's 2016 conference:
Global-NAMRIP was set up to search for such solutions and mitigations, with particular emphasis to finding alternatives to the oft-cited route of simply funding drug companies to produce more antibiotics. According to the New Scientist,:
Global-NAMRIP creates new research teams, commissions new research, engaging with industry to roll out solutions to society, and engaging with the public and policymakers to conduct outreach, education and dialogue. The award-winning Public Engagement and Policymaker Engagement programmes that Leighton devised and leads have been mentioned in Parliament by the Under-Secretary of State for Health on 16 November 2017. and Leighton has addressed the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on his approach to addressing the threat of AMR.
Global-NAMRIP particularly supports Low/Middle Income Countries with not-for-profit interventions, for example with initiatives in urban and rural Ghana. In Uganda in 2019, Global-NAMRIP members from Uganda, Liberia, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and the UK met to compare, for the first time, the national AMR strategies of their respective countries, to share best practice. The meeting also produced significant impact in education, support for young innovators, and responded to a request from the Ugandan Minister for Health to write for him the 'Kampala Declaration on AMR'.

Health Effects of Ultrasound in Air

Health Effects of Ultrasound in Air was founded 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.
The 2016 report that first raised the issues was, in the first 2 years, downloaded over 20,000 times from the Royal Society website, leading to requests for a follow-up, a journal special issue, and numerous conference sessions worldwide as the importance of this topic was realised. Scientists, engineers and the public around the world are now logging the location and type of device that emits ultrasound. Leighton became an acknowledged world expert on such public exposures, and on the claims of 'sonic attacks' on US Embassy staff in Cuba and China. His expertise on the effect on humans of ultrasound in air provided the scientific basis that was cited by Giles Watling MP in the Motion for leave to bring in a Bill on "Anti-loitering Devices ".

Extraterrestrial acoustics

Leighton's explanation of how humpback whales use sound when feeding in bubble nets is now a staple explanation on whale tour boats. He explained how dolphins can echolocate while producing bubble nets to hunt, a process that should blind their sonar.

Inventions

Medical and healthcare

Leighton invented systems for:
and assisted the Institute of Cancer Research with technology for tumour therapy monitoring.
Two billion people have been scanned in the womb under the guidelines he helped co-author for the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology guidelines for foetal ultrasonic scanning.
He served on the Government of the United Kingdom's Working Group of the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Sub Group and advised the Health Protection Agency and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection on the safety of ultrasound.
Other medical and healthcare inventions and breakthroughs are listed below under Sloan Water Technology Ltd., Global-NAMRIP and [|HEFUA].

Humanitarian

Leighton invented:
and, in collaboration with the National Oceanography Centre, one sold by Kongsberg for archaeological and civil engineering purposes. Various collaborations are looking at ways of providing clean water from waste in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, including mentorships of young entrepreneurs in Africa.

Environmental and Safety

Leighton:
In the late 1980s, Leighton discovered a new ultrasonic signal that he identified as due to surface waves on the walls of gas bubbles in liquids. Multidisciplinary research in the following ten parallel streams of work turned this discovery into Sloan Water Technology Ltd:
  1. Theory of how to stimulate these surface waves;
  2. measurement of the liquid convection and shear they generate; theory on how sound causes the bubbles to generate cracks;
  3. theory for acoustics in porous materials ;
  4. the world's first measurements of the bubble size distribution for industry and in the ocean surf zone, leading to ocean measurements necessary to predict the climatological significance of the transfer of carbon dioxide between atmosphere and ocean. It also provided techniques for measurement in industrial pipelines which led to sensors for the oil and gas, carbon capture and storage, ceramics and nuclear industries.
  5. measurement of the liquid convection and shear from these surface waves; theory on how sound causes the bubbles to generate cracks;
  6. acoustic losses in water surrounded on all sides by air and containing microscopic natural particles;
  7. acoustic propagation down curved columns of fluid, and how horns could facilitate this;
  8. use of acoustic pulses to enhance bubble activity;
  9. controlled bubble generation;
  10. how these bubbles affect living cells and surfaces.
These 10 streams of fundamental research represented the knowledge on which Sloan Water Technology Ltd. was founded. It is currently producing technology for cleaning and changing surfaces using only cold water, air bubbles and sound. This reduces the use of water and electricity, reduces pollution and has run-off that is easier to convert back to drinking water, and reduces the threat of ‘superbugs’.

Awards and honours

Leighton has been awarded the following medals and distinctions:

Medals

The citation of the 2006 Paterson Medal of the Institute of Physics states that:

Awards

Leighton is an Academician of three National Academies. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014. His nomination reads:
In 2018 he was elected to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences, the citation reading for 'harnessing the physical sciences for the benefit of patients' as:
Leighton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 for his services to Engineering and society. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics 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. He is a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies of Loughborough University.
In 2018 the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration, of which he had not been a member, undertook a change to its Bylaws, and vote of all IIAV members, to create new rank of Distinguished Fellow. It is the highest rank for individual IIAV members of this international body, and Professor Leighton was the recipient in its inaugural year.

Outreach, TV and radio work

Leighton has developed and conducted multiply-award-winning outreach activities to the public, and to encourage of young men and women to engage, and possibly follow careers in, science and engineering, with school visits, science fairs, exhibits, games, and appearances on TV and radio.
His public engagement work regarding his invention, “The most dangerous game in the world”, which he designed to communicate with the public on the issue of superbugs and how they can protect themselves and society, was mentioned by Steve Brine MP, the Under-Secretary of State for Health on 16 November 2017. The IMDb and "Who's Who" have collated entries for Professor Leighton. In his 2014 book 'Sonic Wonderland', the broadcaster Trevor Cox described Professor Leighton as 'a middle-aged Harry Potter'.