Profile

James Taylor holds a Personal Chair in Control Engineering. He is Impact Champion for the School of Engineering and lead for Robotics & Control. He was group lead for Nuclear Science & Engineering (2019-24) and Director of Teaching and/or Deputy Head of Engineering (2005-2018). His research focuses on data-driven modelling and automatic control, applied to challenging, uncertain systems across energy, health, robotics, and the environment.

Professor Taylor has been co-investigator for £15m+ of UK research council funding across 10+ projects, addressing diverse topics, such as responsive manufacturing (EP/V051059), decommissioning robotics (EP/V026941/1), wave energy conversion (EP/V040561/1) and adaptive medical treatment (EP/M015637/1). He has been principal investigator for 10+ industry projects, primarily in relation to matched or fully-funded PhD studentships.

He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering & Technology (IET), a member of the IET Academic Accreditation Committee, and a past chair for the IET Control & Automation Network. He is external examiner at the University of Southampton, and has previously held program examiner roles at the universities of Bath, Coventry and Loughborough. He sits on the Editorial Boards for three Elsevier Journals, Environmental Modelling & Software, Biosystems Engineering and Progress in Nuclear Energy.

He is the co-author of over 200 peer reviewed Journal and International Conference articles. His co-authored book on True Digital Control: Statistical Modelling and Non-Minimal State Space Design was published by Wiley. He co-develops the CAPTAIN Toolbox (MATLAB) for system identification, time series analysis, forecasting and control, used by researchers worldwide.

Professor Taylor arrived at Lancaster University as an undergraduate student, graduating with BSc (Hons) (1992) and PhD (1996) degrees in Environmental Science, the latter in the area of control system design. His PhD was supervised by Professor Peter Young and Dr Arun Chotai. He was Research Associate in Environmental Science for six years, before his appointment in 2000 to an academic position in Engineering.

Professor Taylor's personal web page has more information.