Richard Watson was born in Melbourne, Australia and studied Physics at the University of Melbourne. His PhD was in Nuclear Physics from the Australian National University, Canberra. He also earned a Graduate Diploma in Operations Research (OR) from the University of Canberra. Starting in 1973 he worked as a Research Scientist for the Australian Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Canberra, specialising in OR and military logistics. While working for DSTO Canberra he led a ground-breaking study of the RAAF Logistics System, for which he gained an international reputation in information systems planning. On moving to Melbourne in 1990 he worked for DSTO Maritime Operations Division and also as a part-time Lecturer in IT for Swinburne University of Technology, where he taught and did research in systems methodologies. Starting in 2000 He worked for three years as a Business Analyst for Open Telecommunications Ltd in Melbourne, and in 2004-5 spent a year in Auckland working as a Systems Engineer for Cubic Defence New Zealand. Since 2006 he has been an IT consultant whose clients have included the Defence Mareriel Organisation (DMO) and the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), and a sessional lecturer in IT for several universities in Melbourne. Since 2016 he has undertaken private research and development in the upcoming fields of Internet of Things (IoT) and Data Science, and has supervised student teams on successful projects for local councils. His research in these fields has been published in highly regarded journals and conferences. With his former DSTO colleague Peter Ryan he founded Ryan Watson Consulting Pty Ltd in October 2020 to help clients make better use of these new technologies and transition to being “smart cities”.