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Staff spotlight: Professor Paul Tofts

Meet Professor Paul Tofts, Emeritus Professor.

Could you tell us a little bit about your background?

I was lucky enough to go to a grammar school where I had good maths and physics teachers. When I left, I went to study at the University of Oxford and found that I really thrived in the whole physics and maths environment. I loved Oxford and I got a good degree, but the place was a little bit old fashioned for me and I decided to go somewhere else for my PhD. The University of Sussex was new at that time, back in the 1970s, and it was a really interesting place full of lots of dynamic people so I decided to carry out my postgraduate degree in nuclear magnetic resonance there.

Why did you choose your field of specialty?

I was very motivated to do something useful and I had been interested in doing medical physics for quite a long time. After I finished the PhD, I got a medical physics job in London and commuted from Brighton for a very long time. I thrived in London at the UCL Institute of Neurology and I developed a lot of new techniques for measuring what's going on inside people. In quantitative MRI, I was the first to do all kinds of things, and I became the world expert on quantitative MRI. There are two books which I've been quite seriously involved in, and so I've been really lucky and it’s been an incredible thing to have contribute to.

What was it that originally brought you to BSMS?

I had been wanting to do something medical at Sussex for a long time and when I heard there was going to be a medical school, I knew I had to be involved. I came to BSMS at the age of 57, just as the Clinical Imaging Sciences Centre (CISC) was being built. It was a very interesting place and close to home. I could get here in six minutes on the train, which was perfect for me and a lot easier than my commute to London.

Where are you now?

I live very near to London Road station in a wonderful house that I couldn't afford to buy now, but I bought a long time ago. My house is like a giant physics experiment. I do the plumbing, the wiring, all kinds of things in it.

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What do you do with your free time?

I still do quite a lot of quantitative MRI. I have two consultancies, which I'm really pleased to have because they keep me awake. They ask me difficult questions and then I try and get the answers to these questions and write notes or letters or papers about it. The other thing I do is Action for Happiness. It’s a national group and I run the local Brighton part of it and it's about the science of happiness. You can do a randomised controlled trial to look at medical interventions or drugs or treatments and you can do the same kind of thing with a happiness intervention and you can measure people's happiness. There are some things that you can teach people to do, like a gratitude exercise where you can see the effects last long after you've finished the training. So Action for Happiness is the other thing that I'm really passionate about.

What is your biggest professional achievement?

The quantitative MRI. Conventionally, MRI machines are wonderful and they get more and more clever each year and more and more expensive. They're essentially cameras for radiologists to look at things and what I did was say, well, we can have a second paradigm where the MRI machine is used for measuring, not looking. It's a scientific instrument where you measure what's going on inside someone. You measure how their anatomy and biology and physiology are changing. It’s a completely different way of looking at how to use the machine. That's been my major achievement I would say.

Who has inspired you most in life?

I think the answer is no one. I think I worked it all out myself. I remember at the age of 14, after a particularly difficult time with my parents and at school, I thought, this stuff that these adults are telling me is complete rubbish. I've got to work it all out for myself. It will take a long time and there will be some repetition, but this is the only way.

Describe BSMS in three words.

Friendly, exciting and a wonderful place to be.

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What’s the best piece of advice you would give your younger self?

Recognise that you can get help from people, but you have to be selective about who you ask for help from and who you listen to.

What's your first memory of when you got to CISC?

Bulldozers and mud! Ken Miles, who was Professor of Radiology at the time, took me there and showed it to me and there were bulldozers everywhere. He said, well, it will be fine in the end.

How are you still involved with BSMS?

I guess I would like to still do more in ways. I see Dr Nick Dowell at CISC and contribute to talks and events still, and also work closely with some of the psychologists at Sussex too. I feel I still have much to offer as an Emeritus Professor.