Rob Toulson

Rob Toulson is Professor of Creative Industries: Commercial Music at the University of Westminster, London. He was previously Director of the Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK. Rob is a research leader in the field of commercial music and he has collaborated with many international organisations in the music industry. He is a successful music producer and studio engineer working across most musical genres, from pop to classical and metal to electronica. In particular, he has worked as recording, mixing and mastering engineer on a number of albums for Mediaeval Baebes, who have previously topped the UK classical album chart. He also developed and co-produced the ground-breaking Red Planet EP and iPhone music app for artist Daisy and The Dark, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Rob’s research covers both creative and technical fields, being an expert in sound, music production and electronics. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (1999), a PhD in Digital Signal Processing (2004) and is a certified Chartered Engineer (2009). He has a number of years’ experience working in the electronics industry as well as teaching electronics, music production and audio technology in Higher Education. Rob is Co-Chair of both the Innovation in Music Conference and the Audio Engineering Society European Conference, and a former committee member of the AES British Section. He is co-author of ‘Fast and Effective Embedded Systems Design: applying the ARM mbed’ published by Newnes first in 2012 and a second edition in 2016. He is also inventor of the novel iDrumTune iPhone app, which assists percussionists with drum tuning.

Rob has designed and delivered a number of research, consultancy and knowledge transfer projects funded by, amongst others, The European Commission, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, NESTA, The Royal Society, The European Regional Development Fund and Innovate UK. He has published numerous patents and journal articles and delivered many academic papers at international conferences, as well as supervising PhD students to completion. He has been an invited keynote speaker at many prestigious events hosted at, for example, The Natural History Museum and Dolby Laboratories.