Richard Vigeant

Office: 1350 N. Poquito Road
Phone: (850) 460-9910
Email: rvigeant@ufl.edu
 

Richard Vigeant is the regional director of the University of Florida Research and Education Engineering Facility (REEF). In this role, Richard is responsible for oversight and leadership of the REEF and all its programs which serve the educational and research needs of the Air Force, industry, citizens, and community of the Northwest Florida region. UF-REEF offers Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in engineering and provides research capabilities and opportunities for innovative collaborations locally in mechanics, aerospace, and mechanical engineering, including solid and fluid mechanics, autonomy, and control.

Richard joined the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering in 2017 as the founding director of Florida Applied Research in Engineering (FLARE), bringing three decades of research and development experience to this new applied and classified research paradigm at the University of Florida. Previously serving as Engineering Deputy at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Richard led research and development efforts across all technology readiness levels, serving numerous Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, NASA, and commercial sponsors on projects in areas including safety-critical system architecture, design and security, advanced materials, bioelectronics, high performance computing, fault-tolerant systems, and precision guidance, navigation, and control. Richard managed the strategic aspects of the overall intellectual property portfolio by identifying and prioritizing technologies that could be licensed and commercialized including transitioning technologies to and from the commercial space and identifying innovative emerging academic and venture technologies by interacting with hundreds of start-up companies, accelerators and incubators, dozens of universities, small and large businesses, prime contractors, and federal sponsors. Under the CEO’s committee on strategic workforce planning of the 1,000-member technical staff, Richard optimized practices for flexible staffing, targeted recruiting, and rapid onboarding of cleared talent including undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students from numerous institutions.