After completing his PhD in Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Kent, John Cupitt spent 15 years in the Scientific Department at the National Gallery, London, working on colour and imaging. He was lead researcher and software developer on projects that built multispectral, visible, infrared, x-ray and 3D scanners for art objects. He designed and programmed the Gallery’s colorimetric print-on-demand service.

In 2004 he moved to Imperial College, London, to work as a bioinformatics modeller for the analysis of FDG-PET images of COPD and asthma patients. He has published papers on lung disease, modelling of PET-CT, colour camera calibration, image processing I/O systems, user-interface design, the measurement of colour change in paintings, infrared imaging of paintings and on the analysis of infrared reflectograms. He is the lead developer of libvips, a popular open-source image processing system.