Richard is Chair of Materials Physics and Innovation Policy, and Vice-President of Regional Innovation and Civic Engagement at Manchester University.

He is part of the University of Manchester’s Faculty of Science and Engineering. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2009 he won the Tabor Medal of the UK’s Institute of Physics for his contributions to nanoscience.  He was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Sheffield from 2009 to 2016 and chaired Research England’s Technical Advisory Group for the Knowledge Exchange Framework.