• Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy
• Liquid and Plastic Crystals
• Phase Transitions
• Instrumentation
• Science Education

Richard is a faculty with the School of Arts and Sciences.

He was a Research Associate at the University of Louisville and subsequently worked at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore till 1990.

In 1990, he teamed up with a group of interested educators and co-founded Centre For Learning, an ​“alternative” school in Bangalore where he designed, developed and implemented laboratory based curricula for learning Physics.

He has also explored his entrepreneurial skills and has designed and executed a wide range of automation projects for industries and research laboratories primarily in the area of supervisory control, data acquisition and robotic positioning systems.

He is a strong believer in the dictum that ​“Physics is best learnt by doing” and enjoys building experimental apparatus from material found in scrap yards or cannibalized from discarded instruments. He rejects the ​“black box” approach to experiments.