Washington Yotto Ochieng’s biography, net worth, fact, career, awards and life story

Washington Yotto Ochieng (born October 25, 1964) FREng FICE is the Head of the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London. He also serves as Director of the Engineering Geomatics Group and Chair of Positioning and Navigation Systems.

Early life and education

Ochieng was born in Kendu Bay in Kenya to Grace Akumu Yotto and Michael Yotto Amoko. He earned a bachelor’s in science and engineering from the University of Nairobi in 1988, before moving to the United Kingdom for his graduate studies. He studied satellite geodesy at the University of Nottingham where he was awarded a PhD in 1993 for research on Differential GPS (DGPS) and fiducial network design.

Research and career

Ochieng stayed at Nottingham as a postdoctoral research associate after his PhD, before joining Thales Group as a navigation engineer. Ochieng joined Imperial College London in 1997. He works on the design and application of navigation systems, and hopes to achieve a truly global position, navigation and timing (PNT) system. He serves as Head of the Centre for Transport Studies. He is interested in intelligent traffic control and how it can be used to regulate traffic in congested streets and railways, as well as in air traffic management. He has been involved with several international projects, including European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Galileo, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) joint undertaking. For the GNSS system, Ochieng worked on sensing, modelling of errors in the positional accuracy and ultra-wideband radio systems. He has been involved with the transformation of London’s transport system. Ochieng was concerned about the amount of data that would be collected during the initial stages of the Congestion Charge. He has advised the government on how to decongest the roads in Nairobi. His recent research develops sensor data fusion for situational awareness in autonomous vehicles.

At Imperial College London Ochieng is part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Civil Engineering. He has worked on algorithms that can support the navigation of satellites. He was promoted to a Chair in Positioning and Navigation Systems in 2007.

Awards and honours

• 2005 Imperial College London Rector’s Merit Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching
• 2006 Imperial College London Excellence in Teaching Award
• 2009 GPS World Magazine global GNSS Leaders to watch
• 2013 elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng)