Brian Culshaw was born in Lancashire, England on 24 September 1945. He graduated from University College London with a First Class Honours Degree in Physics in 1966 and a PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1970. He has held appointments at Cornell University (1970), Bell Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada (1971-1973), University College London (1974-1983) Stanford University (1982) and has been Professor of Electronics at Strathclyde University since September 1983 where he has set up the Optoelectronics Division within the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and has acted as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. Professor Culshaw is also a founding director of OptoSci Ltd. which was established in 1994 with the primary objective of exploiting innovative optical technologies developed within Strathclyde University.

The Optoelectronics Division comprises about 30 active research workers pursuing activities in guided wave optical devices and systems, specifically optical sensor techniques, optical fibre components, optical communications and switching network studies and optical instrumentation. The work has been supported by a wide variety of agencies including government, industrial organisations both in the UK and abroad.

Professor Culshaw's personal research activities have centred upon optical fibre sensor system and network studies and novel technologies for optical fibre instrumentation including pressure measurement systems, strain and temperature measuring systems, gyroscopes and structural assessment techniques. He has been involved in journal and book publishing in both editorial and author roles. He has served as a Director of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering based in Bellingham, Washington and is the 2007 President of the society. He has also acted as consultant to numerous industrial and government organisations including in the role of company director.

He has published in excess of 300 technical papers, several conference proceedings, 7 textbooks and a dozen patents.

http://www.strath.ac.uk/eee/research/cmp/people/profbrianculshaw/