Richard Lawson

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Richard "Astro" Lawson serves as Chief Growth Officer at MobileNuclear.  He is a seasoned operations executive, former board president, and career military experimental test pilot with 30 years of global cross-sector leadership in defense, biotechnology, and technology development. He brings expertise in engineering Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E); enterprise risk management; and Department of Defense (DoD) programs.

Richard most recently served as the senior Executive Advisor, Global Manufacturing at Roche/Genentech, focused on manufacturing modernization across nine global sites. He co-founded VMX-1, the U.S. Marine Corps’ Operational Test & Evaluation Center of Excellence, where he served as Executive Director and Chief Test Pilot. He led a 400+ person organization supporting more than $1 billion in advanced strategic technology programs, including testing for advanced platforms such as the F-35, MV-22, and CH-53K as well as unmanned & autonomous systems. Earlier, as Director of Science & Technology at MAWTS-1, Richard managed a $100 million annual operations budget and shaped over $450 million in capital planning for mission-critical infrastructure projects over a ten-year period.

Richard was as a Stanford University Visiting Scholar at the Precourt Institute for Energy, focused on transitioning artificial intelligence, cyber security, and advanced energy to the DoD. He is a distinguished graduate of both the U.S. Naval Academy (B.S. in Naval Architecture) and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. He earned an M.Eng. from the University of California, Berkeley and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program. 

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