David is now a Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College, and a Non-Executive member of the UK Space Agency Steering Board.  He had an academic career in Britain and USA, eventually becoming head of Physics at Imperial College, London.  From 2001 to 2011 he was the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency (ESA). Before that he was head of Earth Observation strategy at ESA. Appointed in 1997 he drew up what has become the current architecture for European Earth Observation space programmes.

He is past president of the Royal Astronomical Society, a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a visiting professor at the Universities of Plymouth and Lancaster, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA.  He is vice-chair of the EU Horizon 2020 Space Expert Advisory Group. He is patron of the British Science Fiction Foundation and the Plymouth Astronomical Society and honorary president of the Bristol Astronomical Society. A space magnetometer he built at Imperial still operates in orbit around the planet Saturn aboard the NASA Cassini spacecraft. 

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