Gary Atkinson completed an MSci degree in physics at the University of Nottingham in 2003. Upon graduation, he moved to the University of York to study for a PhD degree in the Department of Computer Science, under the supervision of Edwin Hancock. His research was concerned with improving shape recovery algorithms and reflectance function estimation for computer vision using polarisation. In 2007, Dr. Atkinson moved to the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, UK, to work on face reconstruction and recognition. He has since researched a range of areas in computer vision including 3D image analysis of plagiocephaly, industrial inspection, reflectance analysis, security/CCTV imaging, robotics, agritech and composite materials analysis. He has supervised several PhDs in the area and has published nearly 50 papers. He is a fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Dr. Atkinson was appointed as a permanent lecturer at UWE in 2012 and has a range of teaching duties in computer science and engineering. In the 2019–20 academic year, he took a secondment at the National Composites Centre.