I received a BSc from Durham University and a MSc in Electronics in Electronic Engineeringing from Southampton University. For my Ph.D. from Southampton University in 1990, I studied the digital control of a multifunction prosthetic hand. In 1988, the work included creating the world's first microprocessor controlled prosthetic limb to be worn by a user in the field.

Throughout the 1990s, I worked at the Oxford Orthopaedic Engineering Centre, (part of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, hospital) where I was involved in a variety of orthopaedic projects.  I was part of the teams that studied the impact of deformity correction on the muscles and nerves of the patients and investigated forms of rehabilitation following joint replacement and knee ligament rupture. For a time, I was the lead engineer on a project to investigate the movement of hip and knee joint replacements using X-ray photogrammetry. While at the Nuffield, I continued researching advanced artificial arms and projects included two funded by the European Union investigating aspects of the design and control of prosthetic arms. The team fitted the first prosthetic limb to be controlled by a serial bus and used in the field (in 1998), the successor to this arm continues to be in daily use. From 2000, I became a Lecturer at the Cybernetics Department of Reading University, where I was part of the team that performed the first implant of a bi-directional nerve sensor on a healthy human being. The recipient controlled one of my hands 'feeling' the contact of the hand with external objects.

In 2003, I took up a Canada Research Chair in Rehabilitation Cybernetics at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, where I conducted research in the clinical application of intelligent prosthetic arms, energy storage and return in prosthetic ankles and was part of the Upper Limb Prosthetics Outcome Measures Group (ULPOM), promoting the use of validated and standardised tools of prosthetic assessment. I have extensive personal experience in using myoelectric controlled artificial hands and was rated "Good" when measured using the Assessment for the Capacity of Myoelectric Control (ACMC). In 2015, I became the Head of the Engineering Science Department of the University of Greenwich in the UK.

I have chaired both of the two international conferences on Upper Limb Prosthetics. In Canada; MEC (Myoelectric Control Symposium), and in the UK; TIPS (Trent International Prosthetics Symposium). The most recent TIPS was in Salford in 2019 and again had delegates from all around the world. I was part of the team to deliver the International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO), World Congress in Vancouver, Canada in 2007. I am on the executive of the UK National Members Society of the ISPO, and the editorial board of the Journal of Prosthetics and Orthotics.

I joined Portsmouth as Head of the School of Energy and Electronic Engineering in November 2018.