Sunish Mathews completed B.Sc and M.Sc. from CMS College, Kottayam, in India (aff. Mahatma Gandhi University). He qualified the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and joined the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati as a Research Assistant for a project on the development and optical characterisation of novel organic dyes (phthalocyanines) with high third-order optical nonlinearity.

He received his PhD from Technological University (TU) Dublin in Ireland (formerly Dublin Institute Technology). His doctoral research was focussed on fibre optic sensors based on photonic crystal fibres (PCF) for electric field sensing. At TU Dublin he has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher for developing miniature fibre optic sensors to provide force feedback for handheld laparoscopic surgical instruments.

He is currently a Research Associate in the Wellcome/EPSRC Centre for Interventional & Surgical Sciences (WEISS) at UCL. His research is focussed towards novel fibre optic sensors and probes for ultrasonic needle tracking, photoacoustic sensing and intravascular imaging. His research interests are broadly in fiber optic sensors for minimally invasive surgery.