David Thompson works in Southampton University, he is the top famous international professor in the noise and vibration of railways, particularly the reduction of rolling noise, aerodynamic noise and ground vibration. In his work he aims to develop appropriate theoretical models to achieve this. He has worked in many EU-funded collaborative projects and acts as a consultant to many companies in the rail industry.
Career history
David graduated in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1980. He worked for British Rail Research for nearly 10 years, mainly in the acoustics team. During this time he obtained his PhD at the ISVR in the area of wheel/rail noise modelling.
He then spent over six years at TNO in the Netherlands where he developed the TWINS model for railway rolling noise, which is still used throughout the industry.
In 1996 he returned to the UK on taking up an appointment as Lecturer at the ISVR, becoming Professor in 2004 in Southampton. He has written over 200 journal papers in the field and his book on ‘Railway Noise and Vibration: Mechanisms, Modelling and Means of Control’ was published by Elsevier in 2008 and has since been translated into Chinese.
In 2015 he was won the Faculty Supervisor of the Year and in 2018 he was awarded the Rayleigh Medal by the Institute of Acoustics for outstanding contributions to acoustics.