Dr. Richard Heenan started at ISIS in 1984, recruited to complete the construction of LOQ the first SANS (Small Angle Neutron Scattering) beam line at the ISIS Facility. He is now widely regarded as a global expert in the fields of small angle scattering instrumentation, SANS data reduction and fitting, with contributions to over 300 scientific publications.

Richard was the lead scientist for the SANS2d beam line on the ISIS second target station, and was involved with the initial proposals and designs for the ZOOM beam line. His much used “Fish” software for SANS data fitting has now largely been superseded by Sasview.

Since 1995 Richard has been involved in many meetings and technical panels for time-of-flight SANS at the European Spallation Source (ESS), and was chair of the SANS STAP (Science & Technical Advisory Panel) from 2012 to 2015.

Richard has been partially retired since Feb 2016, working 2 days a week. Part of his time is to support the design and construction by STFC, in collaboration with the ESS, of the LoKI SANS beam line at the ESS. He is also much involved with the maintenance and development of the Sasview fitting software (https://www.sasview.org/), which is an international, open source project. He also provides advice and expertise to the ISIS team, scientific collaborators, and external projects such as the SANS beam lines at the Chinese Spallation source.