Dr Philip Birch has published widely in image processing and recognition journals. Dr Birch is a lecturer at the University of Sussex. He has made major contributions to the research group in opto-electronics and image processing, he spent 3 years working as a project manager in a start-up company called Spiral Scratch Ltd, where inter alia, he acted as the research coordinator with Liverpool and Sheffield Hallam Universities. His leadership in 3D optical depth measurement and image processing for tracking has resulted in two products that are currently being taken to market and is also patented. He continues to support this start-up company via a new project with Sussex University. He is a member of OSA, IEEE and BMVA.