Richard graduated from University of Glasgow in 1998 and after two years in small animal practice, Richard completed a 3 year residency in small animal medicine at the University of Cambridge.He was awarded the RCVS Certificate in Small Animal Medicine in 2001, the RCVS Diploma in Small Animal Medicine in 2003 and the ECVIM Diploma in Companion Animal medicine in 2004. He was then awarded a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellowship to undertake studies into T cell activation and regulation in diabetes for which he was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2007.
Richard moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2007 and worked as clinical fellow dividing my time between clinical work and research. He was awarded a second Wellcome Trust fellowship to continue his studies into T cell activation in 2008. In 2012 Richard was awarded a third Wellcome Trust fellowship to explore how antigen presentation cells activate a pathogenic T cell response. Richard was appointed Head of Small Animal Medicine in 2011 and Head of Veterinary Clinical Research in 2012. He was promoted to Head of Companion Animal Sciences in 2016 and was awarded a Personal Chair in Comparative Medicine in 2017.
Richard leads the Vitamin D Animal Laboratory (VitDAL) which brings together expertise in clinical veterinary endocrinology and nutrition, proteomics and immunology with the overarching ambition of advancing understanding of vitamin D biology in all species. The research of VitDAL explores the relationship between vitamin D, inflammation and health outcomes in companion, farm and wild animals. These studies run alongside mechanistic investigations in murine experimental disease models. This diverse, multi-species approach allows the lab to address key vitamin D research questions which would not be possible using a single species system.