• Director of the EPSRC/MoD CDT in Sensing Processing & AI for Defence and Security (SPADS)
• Formally director of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Edinburgh
• Editor-in-Chief for the IET Journal of Signal Processing since 2011. The full editorial board is listed here.
• Formally programme Director for the MSc in Signal Processing and Communications (2012-2019).
• Watch the following UDRC videos for recent work I have been supervising or involved in: Adaptive Waveform Design for MIMO Active Sensing Systems (and some involvement with Anomaly Detection in LiDAR); UDRC Summer School.
• For more information on my research interests, and brief outlines of research projects, see my "Research in a Nutshell" page.
• ORCID; Scopus; ResearcherID (N-1782-2014); Research Gate; Google Scholar
• Held Royal Academy of Engineering Industrial Secondment for two days per week at Agilent Technologies in 2015-2016.
• Member of Advisory Board for Firefinch, an Edinburgh based compnay for Bespoke Software and Data Science solutions for business.
• I update this website more than my School of Engineering homepage.
• Social media: LinkedIn, Facebook (Work page)

James Hopgood is a Professor of Statistical Signal Processing in the Institute for Data, Imaging, and Communications, within the School of Engineering, at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He works in the disciplines of Data Science and Machine Learning within the field of Statistical Signal Processing, a branch of Electronic Engineering. 

James's research specialisation include model-based Bayesian signal processing, speech and audio signal processing in adverse acoustic environments, including blind dereverberation and multi-target acoustic source localisation and tracking, single channel signal separation, distant speech recognition, audio-visual fusion, medical imaging, blind image deconvolution, and general statistical signal and image processing.

James received the M.A., M.Eng. degree in Electrical and Information Sciences in 1997 and a Ph.D. in July 2001 in Statistical Signal Processing, part of Information Engineering, both from the University of Cambridge, England. He was then a Post-Doctoral Research Associate for the year after his Ph.D within the same group, at which point he became a Research Fellow at Queens’ College continuing his research in the Signal Processing Laboratory in Cambridge. James joined the University of Edinburgh in April 2004.

Since September 2011, he is Editor-in-Chief for the IET Journal of Signal Processing.

Teaches the undergraduate course, Sensor Networks and Data Analysis (formally Signals and Communications 2) and previously tuaght Signals and Communications 3, in the second and third year respectively. James has over 16 years experience of teaching undergraduate and masters students, and is Director of Electronics and Electrical Engineering. James was previously Programme Director for the MSc in Signal Processing and Communications

Also teaches a 20-credit (double) Masters course on "Probability, Estimation Theory, and Random Signals (PETARS)". Extremely comprehensive courses notes are available for all four courses, along with a series of lecture recordings, tutorial questions, and solutions.

I also teach on the UDRC Summer School at Master's level. For more information, watch this video!

James has been using lecture recording technologies for the last seven years for supporting the student experience. His pedagogical approach is to provide visualisation, intuition, and real-world examples for describing complex topics, while providing teaching materials suitable for a range of learning needs.

James’s interest in audio-signal processing in adverse acoustic environments covers a variety of research topics including: acoustic source localisation and tracking; blind enhancement of de-reverberation of speech and music; environmental noise reduction for acoustic sensing from remote mobile platforms; acoustic weapons fire and gunshot localisation; intelligent sensing form mobile robots; and ad-hoc acoustic sensor networks.

You can listen to some of James's recent work in his short public lecture talk from Edinurgh's Innovative Learning Week entitled "Separation and Marriage: Signal Processing for Life Science".

Other PhD Positions available: Microphone array based acoustic event analysis, Distributed Source Localisation. Please contact me for further information.

Post Doctoral Researchers

Current PDRAs

Past PDRAs

1. Dr Ali Taimori, working on EPSRC EP/S025987/1 Next-Generation Sensing For Human In Vivo Pharmacology- Accelerating Drug Development In Inflammatory Diseases
2. Dr Mengwei Sun. Working on Scalable and Dynamic Inference on EP/S000631/1 Signal Procssing in the Information Age
3. Dr Konstantinos Diamantis. Working on super-resolution methods for sonar and ultrasound.
4. Hamed Azami, now ith Harvard University. Short project on Super-resolution techniques.
5. Steven Herbert, now with DAMPT, University of Cambridge. Worked on Adaptive Waveform Design.
6. Ebtihal Yousif, worked on Gel Electrophoresis signal modelling.
7. Ibrahim Almajai, worked on LOCOBOT project.
8. Christine Evers, now at University of Southampton, previously EPSRC fellow at Imperial College.
9. Steven Fortune, worked on Blind Speech Dereverberation.

Current PhD Students (as First Supervisor or Lead co-supervisor)

1. Student name: Tarek Haloubi
   Thesis title: Machine Learning Techniques for Evaluating Disease and Drug Effectiveness in Fibre-Bundle Endomicroscopy Systems 
   Dates: Commenced 1st March, 2021
   Funding: GSK/Cross-College EPSRC DTP
   
   
2. Student name: Sofie MacDonald
   Thesis title: Distributed Sensor Networks for Scene Analysis in GPS denied environments
   Dates: Commenced 1st October, 2019
   Funding: Leonardo/EPSRC DTP
   
   

3. Student name: Saleh Hanano
   Provisional thesis title: Machine Learning for Real-time Classification of Liver Disease using Ultrasound & Opto-acoustic Imaging
   Dates: Commenced 1st October, 2017
   Funding: Optical Medical Imaging CDT (Optima)

Completed PhDs (as First Supervisor)

1. Student name: David Cormack
   Thesis title: Novel Methods for Multi-target Tracking with Applications in Sensor Registration and Fusion.
   Dates: Commenced 1st October, 2016, submitted March 2020, viva 6th May 2020
   External Examiner: Prof Simon Maskell, University of Liverpool
   Internal Examiner: Dr Yoann Altmann
   Funding: Leonardo/DTP
   
   
2. Student name: Saurav Sthapit
   Thesis title: Computation offloading for algorithms in absence of the Cloud
   Dates: Commenced 1st January, 2014, submitted January 2018, viva 27th March 2018.
   External Examiners: Prof Andrea Cavallaro, Queen Mary, University of London, and Prof Stephan Weiss, University of Strathclyde.
   Funding: UDRC related PhD (see EPSRC Standard Research: EP/K014277/1)
   
   
3. Student name: Ashley Hughes
   Thesis title: Acoustic Source Localisation and Tracking Using Microphone Arrays
   Dates: Commenced 4th October, 2010, submmitted June 2015, viva 2nd October, 2015.
   External Examiner: Dr Wenwu Wang, University of Surrey
   Funding: 50% doctoral-training grant (DTG), 50% scholarships from Maxwell Advanced Technology Fund and Maxwell Fondation.
   
   
4. Student name: Xionghu Zhong
   Thesis title: A Bayesian framework for multiple acoustic source tracking
   Dates: Commenced October 2006, submission May 2010, viva 13th October, 2010.
   External Examiner: Dr Wenwu Wang, University of Surrey
   Funding: University of Edinburgh Chinese Scholarship.
   
   
5. Student name: Christine Evers
   Thesis title: Blind Dereverberation of Speech From Moving and Stationary Speakers Using Sequential Monte Carlo Methods
   Dates: Commenced October 2006, submitted March 2010, viva 10th June, 2010
   External Examiner: Prof Simon Godsill, University of Cambridge
   Funding: ERP Prize Scholarship.
   
   
6. Student name: Sharad Nagappa
   Submitted thesis title: Time-Varying Frequency Analysis of Bat Echolocation Signals using Monte Carlo Methods
   Dates: Commenced October 2005, submitted December 2009, viva 6th April, 2010.
   External Examiner: Prof Mark Plumbley, Queen Mary University
   Funding: BIAS grant.
   
   
7. Student name: Yan Yan
   Thesis title: Statistical signal processing for echo signals from ultrasound linear and nonlinear scatterers
   Dates: Commenced October 2005, submitted, September 2009, viva 10th December, 2009.
   External Examiner: Prof Paul White, University of Southampton
   Funding: 50% by BIAS grant, 50% by Institute for Digital Communications funds.
   
   
8. Student name: Tom Bishop
   Thesis title: Blind Image Deconvolution: Nonstationary Bayesian approaches to restoring blurred photos
   Dates: Commenced October 2004, submitted November 2008, viva March 2009.
   External Examiner: Prof Nick Kingsbury, University of Cambridge
   Funding: EPSRC DTA

Notable External PhD Examinations

1. Institution: University of Newcastle
   Department: School of Engineering
   Student Name: Yang Sun
   Date: September 2019
   Thesis title: "Deep Neural Networks for Monaural Source Separation"
   Supervisor: Dr Mohsen Naqvi

2. Institution: University of Surrey
   Department: Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
   Student Name: Atiyeh Alinaghi
   Date: September 2016
   Thesis title: "Blind Convolutive Stereo Speech Separation and Dereverberation"
   Supervisor: Drs Philip JB Jackson and Wenwu Wang

3. Institution: University of Cambridge
   Department: Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, Department of Engineering
   Student name: ZHANG, Xiao
   Date: October July, 2016
   Thesis title: Probablistic Models & Filters for Financial Time Series.
   Supervisor: Prof. Simon Godsill

4.  Institution: Imperical College London
   Department: Communications and Signal Processing Group, Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department
   Student name: WANG, Yu
   Date: October 2015
   Thesis title: Speech Enhancement in the Modulation Domain
   Supervisor: Dr Mike Brooks

5. Institution: University of Cambridge
   Department: Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, Department of Engineering
   Student name: Maurice Fallon
   Date: Septemer 2008
   Thesis title: Acoustic Source Tracking using Sequential Monte Carlo
   Supervisor: Prof. Simon Godsill

6. Institution: Imperical College London
   Department: Communications and Signal Processing Group, Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department
   Student name: Nikolay Dian Gaubitch
   Date: December 2006
   Thesis title: Blind identification of acoustic systems and enhancement of reverberant speech
   Supervisor: Dr. Patrick Naylor

7. Institution: University of Cambridge
   Department: Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory, Department of Engineering
   Student name: Zaifei Liu
   Date: October 2006
   Thesis title: Monte Carlo Methods for Bayesian Inference in Digital Communications
   Supervisor: Prof. Arnaud Doucet

 Internal PhD Examinations

External examiner for over 20 candidates at the University of Edinburgh.

• (2019-20024) Director of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering
• (2012-2019) Programme Director for the MSc in Signal Processing and Communications.
• (2018-2019) Academic Champion for Tutors and Demonstrators in the School of Engineering.
• (2010-2019) Administrator for School of Engineering Scholarships for "Straight A" Students applying for Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Edinburgh.