Personal statement
I am the Director of the Centre for Signal and Image Processing (CeSIP), and also the Director of the Applied Space Technology Laboratory (ApSTL) within CeSIP, which I founded and where I lead a team of staff and PGR students.
I am a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Space Research (C-Space), University College Dublin, Vice-Chair of the Space Technology Advisory Committee of the UK Space Agency, and an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics. I am also a member of the Industry Advisory Board of Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC, and a Non-Executive Director of Weather Stream Inc.
Previously I was the Founding Director of the Scottish Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications, SoXSA (2014 - 2020), and a Non-Executive Board Member of UK Space Agency (2017 - 2020).
Supporting science and engineering communication to make it more easily accessible, especially to under-represented groups, I provide comment to national & international, specialist & mainstream media, across written word, audio, & visual.
Research interests
The Applied Space Technology Laboratory is addressing global challenges by working at the boundaries between disciplines to deliver a step-change in the democratisation, exploration, and exploitation of space.
- Developing new space and adjacent sector technologies in response to global challenges and anticipated demands, accelerating the democratisation of the use of space, and the data and services it provides.
- Developing technologies and algorithms to process the exponentially increasing data available from space to help us better understand our Earth, and to make this knowledge available to all.
- Developing insights to network systems across the natural sciences to engineer vastly more connected, efficient, and sustainable space systems.
My research has an end-to-end focus on the development and application of systems by ensuring an understanding of the end application. Challenging conventional ideas and working at the interface between disciplines I seek to advance new concepts in the exploration and exploitation of space, for which I was awarded the Royal Society of Edinburgh Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane Medal. Specifically, my research develops concepts in, and applications of space technology, including solar sailing, nanosatellites, and constellations, by developing research into astrodynamics, networked systems, swarming, and distributed and collaborative systems.
Professional activities
- Alignments in functional connectivity networks
- Contributor
- 8/11/2022
- Integration of an LED/SPAD Optical Wireless Transceiver with CubeSat On-board Systems
- Contributor
- 28/9/2020
- The New Peers Review podcast episode 3
- Speaker
- 10/12/2019
- The New Peers Review podcast episode 2
- Speaker
- 3/12/2019
- "New markets: Scottish space industry grows in value to £4bn"
- Interviewee
- 15/3/2019
- The New Peers Review podcast pilot
- Speaker
- 21/2/2019
More professional activities
Projects
- SAfe Passage through Shifting Sands
- Macdonald, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Clemente, Carmine (Co-investigator) McKee, David (Co-investigator) Tachtatzis, Christos (Co-investigator) Clark, Ruaridh (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 16-Jan-2024
- An aUtonomous DistrIbuted Time signal in-Space
- Macdonald, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Clark, Ruaridh (Research Co-investigator) Lowe, Christopher (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2025
- Matryoshka Orbital Networks
- Macdonald, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Clark, Ruaridh (Research Co-investigator) Lowe, Christopher (Research Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2025
- EPSRC IAA Bridging the Gap
- Owens, Steven Robert (Principal Investigator) McGrane, Scott (Co-investigator) Allan, Grant (Co-investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator)
- EPSRC Impact Accelerator Account funded Bridging the Gap project, awarded jointly with Dr Steven Owens, Professor Malcolm MacDonald and Dr Grant Allan to investigate connecting environmental remote observation data with socioeconomic data to inventory opportunities for project creation and data access options
- 01-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2023
- NEU4SST – Neuromorphic Processing for Space Surveillance and Tracking
- Di Caterina, Gaetano (Principal Investigator) Clemente, Carmine (Co-investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Kirkland, Paul (Research Co-investigator)
- 15-Jan-2022 - 30-Jan-2023
- IAA BtG: A new window into autism spectrum disorder from space research
- Clark, Ruaridh (Principal Investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Lu, Szu-Ching (Co-investigator) Delafield-Butt, Jonathan (Principal Investigator) Macdonald, Malcolm (Co-investigator)
- Impact Accelerator Account: Bridging the Gaps project.
Network and dynamical systems analysis, developed by Clark and Macdonald within EPSRC-funded research, has enabled advances in autonomous drone control, brain neuroimaging analysis, dynamical system monitoring, and most recently the design of space systems. This research provides an analytical framework for evaluating swipe patterns from a recently completed, and world leading, autism diagnostic clinical trial of 760 pre-school children.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting at least 700,000 individuals in the UK with an aggregate annual healthcare and support cost of at least £28 billion. Early identification, proceeded by therapeutic intervention, can produce significant, lifelong health and economic benefit. An ASD diagnosis currently requires a trained clinician, but there is a long and growing waiting list for such assessments. To meet demand, and create more accessible means of assessment, bespoke touchscreen games have been developed for early autism detection and recently trialled for children aged 3–6 years.
Touchscreen games provide a scalable alternative for detecting autism, with machine learning analysis able to detect autism with up to 93% accuracy from children’s motor patterns. Machine learning detects differences in user swipe interactions but cannot reveal the nature of these discrepancies, in particular how swipe patterns differ. By employing network analysis, we can identify – for the first time – the specific pattern signatures of autistic users, which will improve the detection of ASD and the accuracy in differentiating ASD from other neurodevelopmental disorders. We will explore how the development of children with neurodevelopmental disorders differs from their typically developed counterparts. Crucial insights that will form the basis of effective diagnosis, supporting and tailoring therapeutic interventions to address the massive economic impact of mis- or late diagnosis.
- 01-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2022
More projects
Address
Electronic and Electrical Engineering
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