Professor Madeleine Bussemaker

University of Surrey

Madeleine currently holds a Green Future Fellowship (Royal Academy of Engineering, 2026-36) and is director of Mantisonix, a spin out company she co-founded following her work on sonolysis of forever chemicals.   

Madeleine completed her PhD at The University of Western Australia's Centre for Energy focusing on the use of ultrasound for the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for biorefinery applications (2013). Part of her PhD involved secondments at Beijing Forestry University and at Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, (QIBEBT) where she worked on biomass pretreatment and characterisation. 

Madeleine moved to Surrey in 2013 where she was involved with biorefinery supply chain optimisation, based on a techno-economic assessment of a novel treatment of lignocellulose. Since moving to Surrey Madeleine has worked on projects on water/environmental remediation (focussing on per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, PFAS), sustainable hair dyes, sustainable supply chains, parametric studies on sonochemical effects, waste/biomass processing and classification, and ultrasonic effects in biological systems. 

Professor Steve Freear

University of Leeds

Steven Freear (IEEE S’95–M’97–SM’11) earned his doctorate in 1997 and subsequently worked in the medical industry for seven years as an electronic system designer. He was appointed Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and then Professor with the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK., in 2006, 2008 and 2016 respectively, where he is currently Director of Research and Innovation. In 2008, he formed the Ultrasound and Embedded Systems Group, specializing in both industrial and biomedical research. His main research interest is concerned with the implementation of advanced analog and digital signal processing and efficient embedded systems design. He teaches digital signal processing, VLSI and embedded systems design, and hardware description languages at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is Vice President for Publications for the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society (UFFC) having previous served as Editor-in-Chief of the Transactions on UFFC (2013-2018). He was Visiting Professor at Georgia Tech from 2014-2018 where he led development of the imaging engine for an MRI compatible CMUT intravascular catheter funded by NIH/Siemens. His research group has developed the Ultrasound Array Research Platform (UARP); its associated intellectual property (IP) is widely used on several biomedical and industrial research projects, both internally and throughout the UK. Relevant EPSRC supported research includes: EP/V04799X/1, EP/W033151/1, EP/N026942/1, EP/I000623/1 and EP/P023266/1 which make use of the UARP for imaging and the targeted acoustic delivery of chemotherapy agents (the UARP is currently under trial with project partner Medical Discoveries Catapult). Grants EP/N034813/1 EP/K029835/1 reflect novel transducer development making use of metamaterials. We have extensive industrial experience and recently gained an R&D contract to deploy the UARP at nuclear decommissioning company, Sellafield, as part of their live decommissioning programme. The group’s embedded systems magnetometry work was developed and commercialized with Speir Hunter. Our patented technology (WO2013/128212, WO/2013/128210, WO2018046947A) is now exploited globally by National Grid (UK), Shell (USA & Canada), Enbridge (Canada), Total (France), Gasunie (Netherlands & Germany), Sinopec (China & Malaysia), GRTgaz (France) and Petrochina (China), inter-alia. We have completed 4 highly successful Industrial Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects with Pace, RTK Instruments, BCA leisure, Ardent and currently have embarked on two further projects with Oil and Gas Measurements and LBBC Group. The group has a research portfolio in excess of £6.85m (as PI), 9 patents and over 200 publications.