Peter Kyberd has worked on the application of engineering to orthopaedics, especially prosthetic limbs.  He aims to create solutions that are practical and affordable.  He is interested in understanding how we can control prosthetic arms better with a lower cognitive burden, and he wonders just how much feedback to the user will make this easier, and how much it makes the job more complex and unacceptable.

 Peter Kyberd has a BSc from Durham University.  He received his MSc and Ph.D. from Southampton University, UK.  He studied the control of a multifunction prosthetic hand, and included creating the first ever microprocessor controlled prosthetic limb to be worn by a user in the field.  

 Throughout the 1990s, he worked at the Oxford Orthopaedic Engineering Centre, (Oxford University) where he was part of a verity of orthopaedic projects including two projects funded by the European Union, investigating aspects of the design and control of prosthetic arms.  The team fitted the first prosthetic limb to be controlled by a local area network, which was then clinically applied in 1998.  The successor to this design continues to be in use today.   Other projects included measuring micromovement of hip and knee arthroplasties using stereo photogrammetry, the healing of fractures, study of distraction osteogenesis and the recovery from Anterior Cruciate Ligament rupture. 

 From 2000, he was a Lecturer at the Cybernetics Department of Reading University in the U.K. where he was part of a team that performed the first implant of a bi-directional nerve sensor on a healthy human being.

 In 2003, he took up a prestigious Canada Research Chair in Rehabilitation Cybernetics at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of New Brunswick, Canada, one of the top centres for prosthetics research in north America.  There he conducted research in the clinical application of intelligent prosthetic arms and was part of the Upper Limb Prosthetics Outcome Measures Group, promoting the use of validated and standardised tools of prosthetic assessment. 

 In 2015 he returned to the UK and has headed schools in Greenwich, Portsmouth and Derby Universities. 

 He has chaired seven international conferences on the clinical application of upper limb prostheses.  He was a bicentenary lecturer at the Royal Institution in London.

 His PhD hand is currently on display in the Science Museum, Engineers Gallery.