Richard joined Coventry in 2016 and is responsible for the research mission at the University. He started his career at Imperial College London where he spent nineteen years as a researcher and academic in the Department of Materials before joining the University of Warwick as the Professor of Engineering Materials in the Warwick Manufacturing Group.

He held a number of leadership roles at Warwick including Academic Director of Warwick Manufacturing Group and the Chief Technology Officer for the WMG High Value Manufacturing Catapult centre. During his time at Warwick he established research relationships with a number of major companies, including Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Steel, Cummins and Tata Motors and developed a number of research collaborations in India.

Richard has been involved in the UK Automotive Council for five years, first as a member of the Lightweight Structures Working Group and more recently as a member of the Manufacturing Technology Working Group. He is a member of the Advisory Board Member for the Knowledge Intensive Product Realisation (KIPR) project at Jönköping University, Sweden, and chairs the Strategic Advisory Board for the Designing Alloys for Resource Efficiency (DARE) EPSRC project based at Sheffield University.