Rate My Professor David Clifton

Professor David Clifton is the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair of Clinical Machine Learning in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where he leads the Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab focused on AI for healthcare. He holds an MEng and DPhil from Oxford and is also NIHR Research Professor, the first non-medical scientist appointed to this flagship role. Clifton is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Royal Academy of Engineering, with additional appointments including Visiting Chair in AI for Health at the University of Manchester and Fellow of Fudan University.

His early research developed machine learning methods for jet-engine health monitoring, resulting in patented systems used on aircraft including the Airbus A380, Boeing 787, and Eurofighter Typhoon. He subsequently shifted focus to AI applications in healthcare, with work commercialised through spin-outs such as OBS Medical, Oxehealth, Biobeats, Sensyne Health, and Marley Health. The CHI Lab has established international sites and collaborations, including in China and Vietnam, and contributes to initiatives such as the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, the Pandemic Sciences Institute, and the Oxford-GSK Centre for Biostatistics and AI. Clifton’s research has received over 40 awards, including a UK EPSRC Grand Challenge award, the joint inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation Prize at Oxford, and the IEEE Early Career Award in 2022. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics, statistics, and machine learning at Oxford and founded two AI spin-out companies via Oxford University Innovation in 2024-25. His research interests centre on non-imaging AI methods including time-series analysis, natural language processing, omics data, and sensor informatics for clinical applications.