"I'm an inventor. I like to learn about the world, and put that knowledge to good use -- especially if it's not been done before."

Tim Jervis

Born in the English Midlands, 1967

Cheshire, England

Graduated from Newcastle High School, 1986

Staffordshire, England

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, 1989, Trinity Hall,

University of Cambridge, England

Doctorate Degree in Computational Mathematics, 1993

Cambridge University Engineering Department

I was born in Cheshire, England in 1967, and grew up in a village called Keele in the English Midlands. At the age of 5, I wanted to be a policeman. Before I was 6, I wanted to be an inventor. I liked making things from wires, bulbs, batteries, transistors and relays.

I went to high school in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and realised science and physics were the subjects for me. I was fascinated by the stars and the cosmos, electronics, physics and engineering. In 1981 I was given my first computer.

From high school I went to Cambridge University. Because it was the application of science I was interested in, I studied engineering, specialising in electronics, mathematics and information sciences (computing and signal processing). I stayed on at Cambridge to complete a Ph.D., also in the engineering department. My thesis concerned machines that learn to do better. It treated machine learning ('artificial intelligence') as an optimization problem, and culminated in an optimization algorithm for a learning machine, that works by making a model of the machine's uncertain environment.

After my Ph.D. I worked for a year at Schlumberger Cambridge Research on a post-doctoral research programme, employed by Cambridge University. I used the experience I had gained during my Ph.D. in probabilistic modelling to design an algorithm to improve safety and reduce costs on oil rigs.

Schlumberger invited me to join them full time, and I worked with them until 1998.

I still like inventing things!