Professor Richard A. Williams OBE
FREng, FTSE, FRSE

Richard A. Williams is Principal & Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University based in Scotland, UAE and Malaysia.

His background is an academic leader and entrepreneur in mineral engineering, energy storage systems and environmental technologies. He is a graduate of Imperial College and has held senior posts at Universities of Manchester, Exeter, Leeds and Birmingham.

He has founded several innovation-based business from his own research. He is a Fellow, and former Vice President, of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (Australia) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Manufacturing Technology Centre  (Coventry).  He 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 & Economics and at Southeast University (Nanjing).

He is a director of Entrepreneurial Scotland Foundation, an Advisory Board member of the Lloyds Register Foundation and outgoing director of  the British Geological Survey.