Mr Richard Westgarth BEng, CEng, FIET, FRINA
Adjunct Professor
Richard has over 40 years of experience in the defence and maritime sectors as an innovation strategist and business adviser. His wealth of experience in naval and defence domains builds on his earlier work in research, innovation, change management and consultancy.
His role in BMT is to operate across the Organisation, looking at medium to long term trends. This embraces emergent and disruptive technologies including autonomous systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital transformation, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).
He has been extensively involved with Maritime UK, working in a number of their working groups and leading their futures programme. He sits on the UK Maritime Enterprise Working Group leading on shipbuilding skills related aspects.
He has been active developing the MarRI-UK initiative for a number of years and chairs their working group where he is leading alongside SMII on the development of a Zero Carbon Coastal Highway initiative, seeking UK Government funding for research and innovation in the Maritime Sector.
He co-authored the ‘Global Marine Technology Trends 2030’ series of reports working alongside students and academics from the SMMI.
He sits on the Transport Executive Committee of the IET and the Innovation Committee of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects.
He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects and a Fellow of the IET