Previously he had led the Product Assurance Group, taking responsibility for the work to maintain the RAL Space certification to the ISO 9001 standard for quality management systems and also providing product assurance support to multiple projects.
Richard gained a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 1987 and a Masters in Computation in 1990, separated by two years working for British Airways on software and database development.
He joined RAL in 1993, developing databases, software and web applications for the World Data Centre for Solar-Terrestrial Physics. He also undertook research into neural networks and solar-terrestrial physics, and managed the project to development and initial operations of the European Payload Operations Service of the joint ESA-Chinese Doublestar mission.
