David Clifton MEng DPhil (Oxon)

Professor David Clifton is the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair of Clinical Machine Learning at the University of Oxford, and leads the Computational Health Informatics (CHI) Lab which focuses on AI for Healthcare.  He is also NIHR Research Professor, appointed as the first non-medical scientist to the NIHR's "flagship chair".

He is Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, a Research Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Visiting Chair in AI for Health at the University of Manchester, and a Fellow of Fudan University, China.

He studied engineering, specialising in machine learning, at Oxford's Department of Engineering Science, supervised by Lord (Lionel) Tarassenko CBE. His early research resulted in patented systems for jet-engine health monitoring, used with the engines of the Airbus A380, the Boeing 787 "Dreamliner", and the Eurofighter Typhoon. He then focused on the development of AI-based methods for healthcare. His research has been commercialised via university spin-out companies OBS Medical, Oxehealth, Biobeats, Sensyne Health, and Marley Health in addition to collaboration with multinational industrial bodies.

In 2018, the CHI Lab opened its second site, in the Oxford University-owned research labs in Suzhou (China), which focuses on open research in "Digital Health" using public data.  In 2019, the Wellcome Trust's first "Flagship Centre" was announced, which joins CHI Lab to the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, focused on AI for healthcare in low-income countries.  In 2021, the Oxford-CityU Centre for Cardiovascular Engineering was opened in Hong Kong, of which he is co-director.  In 2022, the Pandemic Sciences Institute opened at Oxford, for which CHI Lab provides its AI theme.  In 2025, the Oxford-GSK Centre for Biostatistics and AI was created, in which the CHI Lab is one of four contributing research groups.

His research has won over 40 awards; he is a Grand Challenge awardee from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, for "future leaders in healthcare." He was joint winner of the inaugural "Vice-Chancellor's Innovation Prize", which identifies the best interdisciplinary research across the entirety of the University of Oxford.  He was the recipient of the IEEE Early Career Award in 2022, given to one engineer annually for achievements within the first ten years of their academic career. 

He has previously taught widely across Oxford undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics, statistics, and machine learning.  He founded two AI spin-out companies in 2024-25 via Oxford University Innovation.

Research in the Computational Health Information (CHI) Laboratory focuses on the development of in-hospital and in-home systems for AI-driven interventions that are used in practice. Translation into low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a parallel research theme.  The lab has a focus on non-imaging AI methods: foundation models, time-series analysis, natural language processing, -omics data, and sensor informatics.

Please see our [lab web-site] for details.

CHI Lab offers a wide range of complex, real-world projects in AI for healthcare.  Please contact Professor Clifton for enquiries.

Most doctoral students in the CHI Lab hold highly competitive scholarships (Rhodes, Clarendon, etc.) for which Professor Clifton is happy to offer advice.