Martyn Boutelle trained at Imperial College gaining a PhD in electrochemistry with John Albery in the Department of Chemistry. He then moved to Physiology at the University of Oxford where he worked with Marianne Fillenz in the interdisciplinary area of in vivo monitoring of the brain using electrochemical sensors. His work there lead to an interest in brain metabolism, and monitoring extracellular neurochemistry with high time resolution by use of microelectrodes and on-line microdialysis. This was extended to clinical monitoring of the brain in 1995 when he moved to the Department of Chemistry, King’s College where he was a Lecturer and then a Reader in Biomedical Analysis.

He now works closely with neurosurgeons at King’s College Hospital,  and bowel surgeons at St Mary’s Hospital on the use of rapid sampling on-line microdialysis to detect transient ischaemia, and the development of new clinical monitoring techniques. He is a founder member of COSBID (www.cosbid.org), a grouping of clinicians and fundamental scientists interested in the role of spontaneous brain depolarisations in the maturation of brain injury.