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The University of Southampton
Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute

Promotion for SMMI expert Blair Thornton

Published: 25 November 2020
Blair Thornton

SMMI expert Blair Thornton has been promoted to full Professor following an announcement at Senate on 21 October 2020.  SMMI congratulates Blair on this very well-deserved recognition of his academic achievements and contributions to date.

Blair is Professor of Oceanic Engineering Science within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton. He currently holds an EPSRC innovation fellowship to develop passive underwater robotic systems for scalable seabed imaging.

His research interests focus on developing scalable methods for visual and in situ chemical seafloor observation through improved sensing and autonomy. He is dedicated to fielding systems in real environments and overcoming bottlenecks in the flow of information from data-collection through to human interpretation and insight. For more information on research activities, please visit the ocean perception website.

Blair graduated with a BEng in Marine Engineering at the University of Southampton where he went on to receive his PhD in Underwater Robotics in 2006. During his PhD, Blair spent 2 years at the URA laboratory at the IIS, University of Tokyo, where he continued his research until he rejoined the University of Southampton in 2016 in his current role. During this time, he has participated in more than 40 ocean research expeditions (26 of which as principal investigator) and spent over 350 days at sea.  He is an associate editor for the IEEE/Journal of Oceanic Engineering, and was awarded the Okamura Kenji prize for outstanding contribution to marine technology in 2014 for his contribution to seafloor debris and radiation monitoring following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan.

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