Richard Kitney

Professor, Imperial College London

Kitney is Professor of Biomedical Systems Engineering at Imperial College London and Co-Director of the UK’s National Industrial Translation Centre for Synthetic Biology/Engineering Biology (SynbiCITE). Kitney is a Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering (the UK’s National Academy of Engineering) and Chaired the Academy’s Inquiry into Synthetic Biology. He a member of the UK’s Ministerial Leadership Council for Engineering Biology. Kitney (with Professor Paul Freemont) has been responsible for founding and developing the Imperial College Engineering/Biology Hub. Kitney has considerable business experience, particularly in relation to start-ups and SMEs. For example, he was Co-founder and Chairman of Visbion Ltd (until December 2022) – a medical imaging and biomedical information systems company, with over 1000 installations in 10 countries. In 2022 Kitney Co-founded SynBioVen (SBV), a venture fund focussing on investment in UK Start-ups and SMEs in engineering biology. He is a Director of SBV. Kitney has published over 300 papers in the fields of engineering biology, mathematical modelling, biomedical information systems, and medical imaging and has worked extensively in and with industry. He was an author of both the UK Government’s Roadmaps for Synthetic Biology. Kitney is an Academician of the International Academy of Biomedical Engineering and is also a Fellow of AIMBE (the America Academy of Biomedical Engineering). In 2006 he was made an Honorary Fellow of both The Royal College of Physicians and The Royal College of Surgeons. In 2016 he was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

In June 2001, Kitney was awarded The Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Information Technology in Healthcare.