Paul Michael Newman CBE FREng (born 1973[2]) is a British engineer and academic who founded the Oxford Robotics Institute.[3] He is the BP Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford,[4] and head of the Oxford Mobile Robotics Group (MRG).[4]
Paul Newman | |
|---|---|
| Citizenship | British |
| Education | PhD. |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney |
| Known for | Founding Oxford Robotics Institute & Oxa |
| Awards | Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal (2019)[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Robotics Information engineering Autonomous vehicles |
| Institutions | University of Oxford Keble College, Oxford Oxa |
| Thesis | On the structure and solution of the simultaneous localisation and map building problem (1999) |
| Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte | |
| Website | robots |
In 2014, he co-founded Oxa with Ingmar Posner,[5] noted for developing the first self-driving cars on British roads.[6]
Education
editNewman received an MEng in Engineering Science from Balliol College, Oxford in 1995, followed by a PhD in autonomous navigation from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney, Australia.[5]
Career and research
editNewman’s work on autonomous vehicle technology has led him to author 200 papers and garner over 15,000 citations.[5] He has an h-index of 72 according to Google Scholar.[7] In his doctoral dissertation at the University of Sydney, Newman set out the fundamentals of the large-scale navigation problem SLAM, which would later become one of the most cited papers in the field at over 3,000 citations.[5]
Following his PhD in 1999 under Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,[2][8] Newman worked as a Navigation Engineer at Sonardyne International, UK, in 1999 and 2000, where he wrote the navigation algorithms which underpinned operation of autonomous sub-sea vehicles dealing with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.[9]
In 2000, Newman left industry for MIT, where he was a postdoctoral research scientist, working with Professor John J. Leonard on large-scale field robotics both on land and in the ocean.[5]
He became a Departmental Lecturer in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford in 2003,[5] and set up the Mobile Robotics Group where he developed partnerships with BAE Systems and Nissan.[10] In 2005, he was appointed to a University Lectureship in Information Engineering and elected a fellow of New College Oxford where he was a Tutorial Fellow until 2012.[11] He became Professor of Engineering Science at New College, in 2010,[6] and BP Professor of Information Engineering and Fellow of Keble College in 2012.[11]
In 2010, Newman was awarded an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship.[11] The flagship output was the “Robotcar”, which, in 2013, became the first autonomous vehicle permitted on public roads in the UK.[10] In 2014, Newman, with the newly developed technology and the Robotcar team, co-founded spin-out Oxbotica, later renamed to Oxa.[11][6][12]
He founded the Oxford Robotics Institute in 2016 and served as director until 2022.[13]
Honours, advisory roles and fellowships
editNewman was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the IEEE in 2014, both with citations for "outstanding contributions to robot navigation".[5]
He served on the UK Government’s Department for Transport Scientific Advisory Council from 2016 to 2020.[5]
From 2020 Newman has served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology.[6][13]
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to technology and engineering.[14]
References
edit- ↑ "Top 100 Influential People"; Accessed 2026-03-20
- 1 2 Kenward, Michael (2015). "Instilling robots with lifelong learning: Professor Paul Newman FREng" (PDF). Ingenia. No. 65. Royal Academy of Engineering. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
- ↑ "Members of Oxford University recognised in the King's Birthday Honours 2023 | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. 17 June 2023. Retrieved 20 March 2026.
- 1 2 "Paul Newman - Homepage : Main - Home Page browse". Robots.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Paul Newman – Oxford Robotics Institute". Ori.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
- 1 2 3 4 Orlowski, Andrew (9 January 2026). "Why Britain's self-driving pioneer turned his back on the open road". The Telegraph. Retrieved 12 March 2026.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "Paul Newman". Google Scholar. Retrieved 11 January 2023.
- ↑ "Paul Newman". The Mathematics Genealogy Project. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
- ↑ Campbell, Peter (17 March 2017). "Oxbotica unlocks the potential of driverless cars". Financial Times. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
- 1 2 "8 things about Oxford's driverless tech | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
- 1 2 3 4 "Keble People Professor Paul Newman". www.keble.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 March 2026.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ Balch, Oliver (13 April 2017). "Driverless cars will make our roads safer, says Oxbotica co-founder". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
- 1 2 "Paul Newman CBE". Top 100 Influential People. 20 June 2024. Retrieved 12 March 2026.
- ↑ "No. 64082". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2023. p. B10.