Alison Noble facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alison Noble
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Noble in 2017
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| Born | 28 January 1965 Nottingham, England
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| Education | Maidstone Grammar School for Girls |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford (BA, DPhil) |
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| Thesis | Descriptions of image surfaces (1989) |
| Doctoral advisor | J. Michael Brady |
Julia Alison Noble (born 28 January 1965) is a famous British engineer. She is a professor at the University of Oxford, where she teaches Biomedical Engineering. This field uses engineering ideas to solve problems in medicine. Since 2011, she has also been a fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford, which is part of the university.
As of 2017, Professor Noble is the chief technology officer for Intelligent Ultrasound Limited. This company started from Oxford University and focuses on medical imaging, which means creating pictures of the inside of the body. She helped start this company. From 2012 to 2016, she was the director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME). In 2023, she became the Foreign Secretary of The Royal Society, a very old and respected group for scientists.
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Becoming an Engineer
Julia Alison Noble was born on January 28, 1965, in Nottingham, England. Her parents were James Bryan Noble and Patricia Ann Noble. She went to Maidstone Grammar School for Girls in Kent.
After school, she studied at St Hugh's College, Oxford. In 1986, she earned a top-grade Bachelor of Arts degree in Engineering Science. She then continued her studies and received a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1989. Her DPhil research focused on computer vision and image segmentation. This involved teaching computers to "see" and understand parts of images. Her supervisor for this work was J. Michael Brady.
Her Work and Discoveries
Professor Noble began her career in 1989 as a research scientist at the General Electric Corporate R&D Center in Schenectady, New York. For five years, she worked on creating systems to check and inspect aircraft engines.
In 1995, she returned to the University of Oxford as a lecturer. Here, she started working on how computers could be used in medicine, especially with images. By 2001, she became a full Professor. She was the first woman to hold such a high-level engineering professorship at Oxford.
Professor Noble is well-known for her work in medical image computing. This field combines her knowledge of medical imaging (like X-rays or ultrasounds) with computational science (using computers to solve problems). Her goal is to help doctors make better decisions in clinical medicine.
Her research has greatly improved how we can automatically get useful information from medical ultrasound scans. She has also developed machine learning solutions. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence where computers learn from data to solve problems in analyzing biomedical images.
Professor Noble has guided over 50 students through their PhD studies. Her research has received funding from important groups like the European Research Council, the Medical Research Council, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Awards and Special Recognition
Professor Noble has received many important awards for her work:
- In 2017, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
- She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2013.
- In 2008, she became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
- She was also made a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET) in 2001.
- In 2023, she was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her great contributions to engineering and medical imaging.
She is a trustee for the Oxford Trust, a charity that helps encourage young people to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). She is also a trustee of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. From 2013 to 2016, she was the President of the Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) Society.
As of 2017, Professor Noble is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. In 2015, she was the first person to receive the Laura Bassi Award from the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2019, she was given the Gabor Medal by the Royal Society. This award recognized her for creating solutions to big problems in biomedical image analysis and for making it much easier to get useful information from medical ultrasound scans automatically.
Outside of Work
When she was a student, Professor Noble was a coxswain for the Oxford University Women's Lightweight Rowing Club. A coxswain is the person who steers the boat and helps the rowers coordinate. She took part in the Henley Boat Races in 1985.
