Professor Richard A Williams
- Job title
- Principal and Vice-Chancellor
- Qualifications
- OBE, FREng, FRSE, FTSE and FIChemE, FIMMM, CEng, CSci
Richard A Williams is Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University.
His background is an academic and entrepreneur in mineral engineering, energy storage systems and environmental technologies. He is a graduate of Imperial College (BSc (Eng), PhD) and has held posts at University of Manchester (UMIST), University of Exeter (Camborne School of Mines) and as Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Leeds (2005-2011) and at the University of Birmingham (2011-2015). He has founded several innovation based businesses.
He is a Fellow Academician of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (Australia) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is Co-chair of the UK-UAE Business Council (Education) and has worked extensively in establishing new educational and research collaborations in Middle East, Africa, Singapore, Malaysia and China. He is a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), Tianjin University of Finance and Economics and at Southeast University (Nanjing). He is an Advisory Board member of the Lloyds Register Foundation, Lloyds Register 100A1 Ambassador, a member of the Converge Challenge Strategic Advisory Board, a non-executive Director of Scottish Enterprise, a trustee of Entrepreneurial Scotland, and a trustee for the Carnegie Education Trust for Scottish Universities.
He is an editor of the Minerals Engineering, Particuology and Institution of Chemical Engineering CHERD journals.
As well as Court, Richard is a member of:
- Court Interim Business Committee
- Donations and Investments Committee
- Finance Committee
- Finance Improvement Plan Oversight Group
- Global Student Life Committee
- Governance and Nominations Committee
- Infrastructure Committee
- Staff Committee