Contact Details

 Dr Paul Wright BSc, PhD, MInstP, MIEEE

 Lecturer in Sensing & Measurement Technology

 

 School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
 Sackville Street Building
 The University of Manchester
 Oxford Road
 Manchester M13 9PL
 United Kingdom

* paul.wright@manchester.ac.uk

( +44 (0) 161 306 4785


 

Background Information

Dr Paul Wright gained a BSc (Hons) in Pure & Applied Physics from the University of Nottingham in 1993 before undertaking postgraduate research in medical physics at the University of Exeter. On completion of his PhD he moved to the University of Teesside, as a lecturer in the Division of Measurement & Control, where he taught various aspects of measurement science, optoelectronics and research methodology. Paul spent 5 years with Land Infrared as a development engineer, working primarily on near-infrared temperature measurement systems, before joining the then Industrial Process Tomography group at UMIST in 2002 to work on laser-based measurement in combustion systems. He is currently a lecturer in the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, with research interests spanning several areas of measurement electronics. Paul has designed numerous optical and electronic instruments and his publications and patents include work on vibrotactile and electrotactile perception, near-IR thermometry, optical tomography and medical instrumentation.

 

Prizes and Awards

Maurice Beck Prize (2007 World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography, Bergen, Norway), for my paper on optical measurement of fuel distribution in vehicle engines.

Best Poster IOP Photon06, (Manchester, UK).

Bill Moore Prize (University of Nottingham, 1993) - awarded to the final year student showing outstanding ability in experimental project work.

 

Research Interests

Paul’s research interests lie primarily in the areas of mixed-signal circuit design, instrumentation and optoelectronics. He has worked extensively in optical measurement, across the visible, infrared and terahertz bands, and in several areas of biomedical instrumentation. He is particularly interested in the development of instrumentation for challenging heavy industrial and clinical environments.

 

Optical tomography

Laser absorption techniques can be used to measure the concentration, temperature and pressure of particular chemical species within mixtures of gases. By combining these techniques with tomographic methods, gas distributions can be imaged. It is also possible to construct images based on optical scattering, fluorescence or incandescence.

Paul is currently a co-investigator on FLITES, a £2.7M EPSRC collaboration involving 4 UK academic institutions and 6 industrial partners. This consortium is currently commissioning jet exhaust emissions imaging systems at the Spanish national aero engine test facility in Madrid, establishing a globally unique capability. Previous projects in this area include IMAGER, a DTI Link project that imaged fuel vapour distribution within one cylinder of an internal combustion engine during operation, and 2-ACE, measuring both hydrocarbons and product water vapour in HCCI combustion.

 

FLITES: optical tomography in jet exhaust

Left: Measurement concept (Trent engine cutaway © Rolls-Royce)

Below: Mounting ring and optics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 


IMAGER: Optical tomography in an internal combustion engine

 

 

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT)

EIT can be used to estimate conductivity distributions within objects. The technique has applications in both medical and industrial imaging.

Paul is currently developing the instrumentation for R3M (‘Robust Repeatable Respiratory Monitoring with EIT’), a £1.9M EPSRC-funded study which brings together electronic engineers, mathematicians and clinicians to develop and evaluate advanced bioimpedance-based tools for lung-function monitoring in critical care contexts. He is also the designer of the fEITER instrument, used to investigate the potential of EIT for functional imaging of the human brain.

EIT: (Left) Fusion of lung MRI and EIT images; (Right) fEITER PCB

 

 

Fibre optic deformation sensors

http://pthumbnails.5min.com/10349388/517469364_3_o.jpgPaul’s work on ‘magic carpet’ fibre optic deformation sensors has attracted substantial media attention and was selected as one of just five innovative UoM projects exhibited at the 2013 Conservative Party Conference, attracting the attention of the then Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts. A recent article (Cantoral-Ceballos et al [2015]) describing their application to gait analysis was among the 50 most downloaded papers from the IEEE Sensors Journal during January and March 2015.

 

 

 

 

Dr Jose Cantoral-Ceballos testing a fibre optic gait sensor

 

 

Wireless sensor networks

Use of low-cost wireless transceivers to create distributed sensor networks.

 

 

Optical thermometry

Studies of the optical emission properties of industrially-significant materials, particularly aluminium alloys, under processing (e.g. hot-rolling, extrusion, forging) and the application of this to improved process temperature measurement.

 

 

Measurements of vibrotactile perception

Investigation of how complex vibrational stimuli are interpreted within the human vibrotactile 'channel'. This highly interdisciplinary study combined aspects of vibrometry, control engineering, signal processing, physiology and psychology.

 

 

Selected Publications

2016

N. Polydorides, S-A. Tsekenis, H. McCann, V-D. A. Prat, P. Wright, “Error bounds for limited-data chemical species tomography,”, to appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2016)

P. Wright, D. McCormick, J. Kliment et al., “Implementation of Non-Intrusive Jet Exhaust Species Distribution Measurements Within a Test Facility,” to appear in in Aerospace Conference, 2016 IEEE.

2015

Hugh McCann, Paul Wright and Kyle Daun ‘Chemical Species Tomography’ in ‘Industrial Tomography – Systems and Applications,’ ed. M. Wang, Woodhead Publishing. p135-174, ISBN- 9781782421184.

N. Terzija, S. Karagiannopoulos, S. Begg, P. Wright, K. Ozanyan, and H. McCann, "Tomographic imaging of the liquid and vapour fuel distributions in a single-cylinder direct-injection gasoline engine," International Journal of Engine Research, vol. 16, pp. 565-579, Jun 2015. doi: 10.1177/1468087414544178

P. Wright, D. McCormick, K. Ozanyan, M. Johnson, J. Black, E. Fisher, et al., "Progress towards non-intrusive optical measurement of gas turbine exhaust species distributions," in Aerospace Conference, 2015 IEEE, 2015, pp. 1-14. doi: 10.1109/AERO.2015.7119019

Cantoral-Ceballos, J.A.; Nurgiyatna, N.; Wright, P.; Vaughan, J.; Brown-Wilson, C.; Scully, P.J.; Ozanyan, K.B., "Intelligent Carpet System, Based on Photonic Guided-Path Tomography, for Gait and Balance Monitoring in Home Environments," Sensors Journal, IEEE , vol.15, no.1, pp.279,289, (2015) DOI:10.1109/jsen.2014.2341455

2014

M. G. Crabb, J. L. Davidson, R. Little, P. Wright, A. R. Morgan, C. A. Miller, J. H. Naish, G. J. M. Parker, R. Kikinis, H. McCann, W. R. B. Lionheart, ‘Mutual information as a measure of image quality for 3D dynamic lung imaging with EIT’ (2014) Physiol. Meas. 35 863 doi:10.1088/0967-3334/35/5/863

P Wright, E Fisher and H McCann ‘Optical Design Considerations for Chemical Species Tomography in a Jet Exhaust Plume’ OSA Applied Industrial Optics Conference, Seattle, USA, July 2014

Brown Wilson, C., Ceballos, J. C., Wright, P., Vaughan, J., Todd, C., Scully, P. J., & Ozanyan, K. B. (2014). Developing a sensing solution to reduce the risk of falls for older people: An interdisciplinary approach. Gerontechnology, 13(2), 174.

2012

Karagiannopoulos S, Cheadle EM, Wright P, Tsekenis SA, and McCann H, Multi-wavelength diode-laser absorption spectroscopy using external intensity modulation by semiconductor optical amplifiers, Appl. Opt. 51(2012), 8057–8067 doi: 10.1364/AO.51.008057

Malinowski A, Lin D, Alam SU, Zhang Z, Ibsen M, Young J, Wright P, Ozanyan K, Stringer M, Miles RE, Richardson DJ, Fiber MOPA based tunable source for terahertz spectroscopy, Laser Physics Lett. 9(5) (2012) 350-354, DOI: 10.7452/lapl.201110143  

Davidson JL, Little RA, Wright P, Naish J, Kikinis R, Parker GJM and McCann H, Fusion of images obtained from EIT and MRI, Electr. Lett. 48(2012), 617–618 doi:10.1049/el.2012.0327

Wright; Paul (Sheffield, GB), Hoppe; Mark (Stein, CH), Grieve; Bruce (Bracknell, GB), Sawafta; Reyad (Greensboro, NC), Pest detector, United States Patent 8,258,966 (granted: September 4, 2012 / PCT filed: November 12, 2007).

2011

Ozanyan KB, Wright P, Stringer MR, Miles RE, Hard-Field THz Tomography, IEEE Sensors Journal 11(10) (2011) 2507-2513, DOI: 10.1109/JSEN.2011.2144967

2010

P. Wright, N. Terzija, J.L. Davidson, S. Garcia-Castillo, C. Garcia-Stewart, S. Pegrum, S. Colbourne, P. Turner, S.D. Crossley, T. Litt, S. Murray, K.B. Ozanyan , and H. McCann, “High-speed chemical species tomography in a multi-cylinder automotive engine”, Chem. Eng. J. 158 (2010) 2-10

2009

P. Wright P, P.R. Green, B.D. Grieve BD, T.A. York, M. Hoppe, “Automated Termite Sensing”, in Proceedings of the IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium, New Orleans, February 17-19, 2009, pp 99-104

2008

R.L. Robinson, J.L. Davidson, P. Wright, C.J.D. Pomfrett, H. McCann, “A Study of Composite Electrode-Tissue Impedance”, 30TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY, VOLS 1-8   Book Series: IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference Proceedings, 2008, pp 1171-1174   

N. Terzija, J.L. Davidson, C.A. Garcia-Stewart, P. Wright, K.B. Ozanyan, S. Pegrum, T.J. Litt, H. McCann, “Image optimization for chemical species tomography with an irregular and sparse beam array”, Meas. Sci. Tech. 19 (2008)

2007

Wright P, Terzija N, Davidson JL, Garcia-Castillo S, Garcia-Stewart CA, Pegrum S, Colbourne S, Turner P, Crossley SD, Litt TJ, Murray SC, Ozanyan KB and McCann H, High-speed Chemical Species Tomography in a multi-cylinder automotive engine, Proc. 5th World Congr. Industrial Process Tomography, ISBN 978-0-85316-265-0, pp. 925-933, Norway, Sept. 2007. (awarded the Maurice Beck Prize for best paper.)

2006

P. Wright, J.L. Davidson, S. Garcia-Castillo, C.A. Garcia-Stewart, S. Pegrum, S. Colbourne, T. Litt, S. Murray, K.B. Ozanyan , and H. McCann, “A high-speed Chemical Species Tomography system for application in a multi-cylinder automotive engine”, in Proceedings of Photon06, Manchester, UK. Institute of Physics, 2006.

J.L. Davidson, C.A. Garcia-Stewart, K.B. Ozanyan, P. Wright, S. Pegrum, and H. McCann, “Image reconstruction for Chemical Species Tomography with an irregular and sparse beam array”, in Proceedings of Photon06, Manchester, UK. Institute of Physics, 2006. [Best Poster Award at Photon06]

Metcalfe SF, Wright P, Tune A, Temperature measuring method, (EP1103801(B1), granted: June 14, 2006).

2005

P. Wright, K.B. Ozanyan, C.A. Garcia-Stewart, S.J. Carey, F.P. Hindle, W. Hurr, S. Pegrum, S. Colbourne, P. Turner, S.D. Crossley, T. Litt, S.C. Murray, and H. McCann, “Toward In-Cylinder Absorption Tomography in a Production Engine”, Appl. Opt. 44 (2005) 6578-6592

P. Wright, K.B. Ozanyan, S. Murray, T. Litt, S. Pegrum, S. Colbourne, and H. McCann, “First optical attenuation measurements across the cylinder of a production IC engine”, In proc. 4th World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography, Aizu, Japan. VCIPT, 2005.

P. Wright, K.B. Ozanyan, S.J. Carey, and H. McCann, “Design of High-Performance Photodiode Receivers for Optical Tomography”, IEEE Sensors J. 5 (2005) 281-288

2003

P. Wright, K.B. Ozanyan, S.J. Carey, H. McCann, "Optimisation of the Signal to Noise Performance of Photodiode Receivers in Near-infrared Absorption Tomography", In proc. 3rd World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography, Banff, Canada, 2nd – 5th September 2003, pp. 219-225.

2002

P. Wright and S.F. Metcalfe, "Recent Innovations and Improvements in Infrared Thermometry within the Aluminium Extrusion Industry", In Proc. 8th International Symposium "Temperature: Its Measurement and Control in Science and Industry, Vol 7", Chicago, October, 2002.

1997

I.R. Summers, P.G. Cooper, P. Wright, D.A. Gratton, P. Milnes, B.H. Brown, "Information from time-varying vibrotactile stimuli", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 102 (6), pp. 3686-3696, December 1997.

 

Outside interests

ClovaPaul lives in Sheffield, on the edge of Peak District National Park, with his wife and two daughters.

He is a keen skier and climber, having learned both in his native north-east as a child, and can often be found bouldering on his local crags.