Doctor Richard Helmer is an experienced commercial engineer, product designer, academic researcher, and innovator. Richard’s work with Australia's national science agency and innovation catalyst, the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), University of Melbourne (Australia), Deakin University (Australia) and many industry, government and community partners has repeatedly produced research translation with impact for industry, government and community. As Theme Leader of the “Advancing Human Performance” theme at the CSIRO, and in collaboration with the Australian Sports Commission, Richard led a team of over 60 researchers to deliver technologies for Australia’s Olympic team – in his fourth Olympiad he personally contributed multiple technologies supporting training for multiple Current World Records and Gold Medal performances at Tokyo.  ​ His startup www.superinteractiv.com specialising in sports tech for mobile and wearable digital experiences & was a finalist in inaugural Australia & New Zealand Sports Technology Awards (ANZSTA) in 2018. His mobile software applications for music and sport are used by 1000s of people across 5 continents. In 2012, he was a founding member of the Australian Sports Technology Network ( www.astn.com.au ) and continues to support sport’s innovation. In 2006 his ‘air guitar’ technology featured on the BBC, ABC, Discovery Science Channel and China Daily newsmedia reaching 1,000,000,000s of people.  Richard has attracted significant research funding, including large grants from Australian commonwealth and state governments (Defence Technology Capability Demonstrator, $3.4M), and industry funding from Australian and international businesses. Internationally, he has collaborated with researchers at The Fraunhofer Institutes, RWTH Aachen Institute of Textile Technology (Germany), National School Supérieure Des Arts Et Industries Textiles (France), and the Insitute of Work Health and Safety (Canada). Richard has personally presented his research work at many top international academic and industry conferences in many fields including Advanced Materials (e.g. invited lectures at CIMTEC, Plastic Electronics ASIA), Fibre Science, Medicine, Health, Interaction Design and Computer Games, Sport and the Arts, including winning best paper awards. Postgraduate students co-supervised by Richard have successfully completed their studies, including winning awards for their faculty’s best thesis of the year . Richard’s PhD papermaking sciences work led to an industrial process design for novel papermaking and received third prize in the global Merrill Lynch Innovation Grants Competition in 2000.