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Dr Pierre Gélat received a BEng degree in elecroacoustics with first class honours in 1994 from the University of Salford, and an MSc degree in sound and vibration studies with distinction in 1996 from the University of Southampton. He then completed a research assistantship in conjunction with Peugeot-Citroën at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (University of Southampton) investigating vehicle engine vibration using statistical energy analysis methods and finite element modelling.
In 1997, he joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Teddington, UK, where he carried out work in the theoretical modelling of industrial and medical ultrasonic devices and characterisation of resulting fields.
Dr Gélat has a strong interest in high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), which is an early-stage non-invasive treatment modality used for directing energy into the body to heat and destroy pathogenic tissue, including tumours. He has extensively researched methods of focusing ultrasound through scatterers, such as ribs, for the purpose of treating cancers of the liver and of the pancreas. He has been actively involved in devising HIFU treatment planning strategies based on numerical simulations.
In 2013, and while at NPL, he completed a PhD degree with UCL Mechanical Engineering, investigating the optimisation of HIFU fields for ablative therapies of tumours in the upper abdomen using boundary element methods. He was awarded the 2011 Institute of Physics Bob Chivers prize for best paper by a PhD student in the field of physical acoustics.
Dr Pierre Gélat joined UCL Mechanical Engineering in 2014. He is a Senior Research Associate currently investigating the design of diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasonic devices employing a transduction mechanism based on the propagation of solitary waves in a granular chain. This involves a combination of contact mechanics simulations using commercial finite element software, together with linear and nonlinear acoustic wave propagation modelling.
Dr Gélat is also Chair of the Physical Acoustics Group committee of the Institute of Physics. He has an interest in audio acoustics, including loudspeaker design and optimal sound reproduction.
Read more about his research with the Ultrasonics Group:
Sound Bullets for Enhanced Biomedical Ultrasound Systems