1975 Master of Science (MSc), Institute of Physics, University of Oslo

1978 - Present Associate Professor (since 1992), Department of Comp and Electrical Eng, University of Stavanger, Norway

After a two year scholarship working with an implantable biomedical sensor (heatflow), in 1978 Rettedal was asked to build a curriculum in clinical engineering in Norway (bachelor degree), and ever since he has delivered courses, been teaching and supervising students in that field.  His research activities and fields of interest are biomedical measurements and monitoring, particular measurements of parameters related to stress or activation in a learning context.

In 1988, he started to develop a patient simulator (PatSim) for training the use of respirators (published 1990).  A few years later, he expanded PatSim to the field of intensive care and anesthesia (published 1996).  He has been concerned with the difficulty in making simulators true to nature, and the learning outcome of using simulators.  The first publication in that respect was in the SESAM meeting in Mainz in 2000, where Rettedal was awarded 'best presentation'.

After founding SESAM in 1994, Rettedal was vice-president from 2001-2003 and a reviewer at a number of SESAM conferences.  Rettedal has also sat on a lot of committees and boards related to biomedical engineering and education.