Meet CEB's new academic

The Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology has welcomed Dr George Gordon to lead the new standalone MRes in Sensor Technologies and Applications course.

George officially joins the department today (20 July), having already spent the past few months settling in, meeting colleagues and preparing for the arrival of the course's first students in October.

He also brings with him an established research group, the Optics and Photonics for clinical Translation, Imaging and Materials (OPTIM) which develops hair-thin optical imaging and sensing technologies designed to access parts of the body that are currently beyond the reach of conventional medical imaging.

The appointment marks a return to Cambridge for George, who moved here from New Zealand in 2009 to undertake a PhD. He met his wife during his time as a student, later worked in Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher and is now returning as a father of three.

"It's going to be busy, but it does feel a bit like coming 'home'," he said.

George completed his undergraduate degree in electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Auckland before moving to Cambridge on a scholarship. He received his PhD in 2013 in wireless and optical telecommunications and later worked closely with Prof Sarah Bohndiek (Physics and CRUK Cambridge Institute) and Prof Tim Wilkinson (Electrical Engineering), building a fully holographic fibre endoscope and developing low cost imaging techniques to improve early cancer detection.

In 2019, he moved to the University of Nottingham to establish his own research group. A year later, he secured a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, which provided a huge boost and enabled him to build his own team focused on ambitious new approaches to biomedical imaging. Despite challenges during the lockdown pandemics, struggling to build the necessary network to both capture and

Getting started, however, coincided with the disruption of the pandemic. He said: "I didn't know anyone and it was hard both professionally and personally. I wanted to focus on imaging things that no one has imaged before, but that's quite difficult when you don't know anyone to give you things to image. But we got there.”

Through these eventual collaborations with colleagues in a hospital setting, George's team were able to identify a major opportunity to apply their technology to challenges such as the early detection of pancreatic cancer, and a new direction for the group's hair-thin optical sensors.

George now leads research developing these optical and nanoscale technologies for biomedical applications, with the focus remaining on creating sensors capable of accessing parts of the body that remain difficult to image.

Alongside relocating his research group, he is also taking on the challenge of leading a brand new course, the MRes in Sensor Technologies and Applications.

"I'm very excited to be starting in the role, and moving my research group into the fantastic facilities here at CEB," he said. "It's been really fun so far reconnecting with old colleagues and meeting new ones, which has helped me to already start to feel more settled.

"I've already had some really fascinating discussions with some of our academics and discussed several areas where I think my research group could really offer some insight or even collaborative projects."

Meanwhile, George will bring innovative thinking to the lecture rooms as he considers how developments in artificial intelligence are changing the way sensor technologies should be taught.

"Assessments are going to have to be done differently going forward," he said.

"AI is forcing us to think differently about how we teach and how we prepare students to use it. For me, this is about teaching the students to develop the judgement and intuition needed to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs. I want to teach them how to use AI responsibly and robustly, rather than pretending they aren’t going to use it.

“A lot of sensor work is coding, and in the past few years AI has fundamentally changed how we do that. We need to reflect that in the way we teach the subject."

Outside work, George says his family keeps him happily busy. He and his wife have three young children, two boys and a girl aged seven, four and two, who he describes as his pride and joy.

Professionally, though, there is plenty to get started on straight away.

"It's going to be an intense start, I will only have a few months before we welcome the first group of students, but I know my new colleagues in the CEB and the broader Sensors CDT team will be a vital support for me," he said. “I should be able to hit the ground running, having spent the past seven years building and leading my own research team and delivering teaching on AI tools. I have also recently been awarded some new funding that will provide a real boost to my research programme as I start at Cambridge.”