Richard Kitney

Professor Kitney is Professor of BioMedical Systems Engineering; Director of the Graduate School of Engineering and Physical Sciences; Chairman of the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology; and Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation. He was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Senior Dean, all at Imperial College, London. Kitney was Founding Head of the Department of Bioengineering from 1991-2001. He is Co-founder and Chairman of Visbion Ltd. Visbion is an Imperial College spinout company. He has published over 300 papers in the fields of mathematical modeling, biomedical information systems, medical imaging, and synthetic biology.

Kitney has been a member of both British Government and European Commission Committees on the application of Information Technology to healthcare and is involved in the formulation of healthcare policy for the UK and to the EU. He wrote a major paper for the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) on the Role of Engineering in the Post Genomic Age. Kitney is Chairman of The Royal Academy of Engineering’s UK Focus on Biomedical Engineering, as well as being a member of the Academy’s Engineering Policy Committee. Kitney was a member of The Royal Society’s working party on Digital Healthcare (Report – Digital healthcare: the impact of information and communication technologies on health and healthcare). He has also been a consultant to a number of major international companies.

Kitney was the Co-Chair of the joint Inquiry by The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Medical Sciences on Systems Biology. The report of the Inquiry – Systems Biology: a vision for engineering and medicine was published in February 2007. He also was Chair of The Royal Academy of Engineering Inquiry into Synthetic Biology – Synthetic Biology: scope, applications and implications was published in May 2009. He is a member of The Royal Society Working Party on Synthetic Biology.

Professor Kitney has worked extensively in the United States and has been a Visiting Professor at MIT since 1991. He is a Co-Director of the Imperial College-MIT International Consortium for Medical Information Technology. Kitney is now working extensively in Synthetic Biology and is heading Imperial College’s initiative in this area with Professor Paul Freemont (Head of the Division of Molecular Biosciences). They have been responsible for three highly successful Imperial College iGEM teams.

Professor Kitney was made a Fellow of the World Technology Network in 1999 for his innovative work in the fields of health and medicine. He was made an Academician of the International Academy of BioMedical Engineering in September 2003 (this is the highest honour bestowed by the International Federation of BioMedical Engineering Societies). He is also a Fellow of AIMBE, the America Academy of BioMedical Engineering. In 2006 he was made an Honorary Fellow of both The Royal College of Physicians and The Royal College of Surgeons.

In June 2001, Professor Kitney was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List for services to Information Technology in Healthcare.