Richard Friend holds the Cavendish Professorship of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is Director of the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability and of the Maxwell Centre.
His research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. His research group was first to demonstrate using polymers efficient operation of field-effect transistors and light-emitting diodes. These advances revealed that the semiconductor properties of this broad class of materials are unexpectedly clean, so that semiconductor devices can both reveal their novel semiconductor physics, including their operation in efficient photovoltaic diodes, optically-pumped lasing, directly-printed polymer transistor circuits and light-emitting transistors.

Richard works as Head of Refining Analysis in BP’s Economics team, based at the company’s headquarters in London. He provides short and long-term oil and refining market analysis to the BP Group and he is also the programme manager for the company’s Statistical Review of World Energy. He has 19 years of experience at BP having previously worked as a refinery engineer and trading analyst. Before this, he studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge.

Dr Reiner is a political scientist and is currently University Senior Lecturer in Technology Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School. David has advised government, industry and non-governmental organisations on energy and environmental policy, with a particular emphasis on the politics of climate change and the social acceptability of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) and other energy technologies including smart meters and shale gas. He is frequently interviewed in national and international media including the BBC World Service, The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

David is also Assistant Director of the Energy Policy Research Group, and is a Research Associate of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies Program, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He sits on the EPRG management committee and the steering committee of the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Programme's Social Research Network. He has provided both written and oral testimony before the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology and the Committee on Energy and Climate Change and contributed to the World Economic Forum in Davos and Moscow. He is the recipient of research grants from the European Commission, UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, Natural Environment Research Council and the Department of Trade and Industry.