Rich Belgard has been active in the computer industry for over 45 years. Over these years, he designed and managed the development of computer architectures at Burroughs, Data General, Tandem Computers and Rational Software, including hardware, software and microarchitecture. He is co-inventor on 18 patents and sole inventor on 7 patents.

Rich is the past Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)'s Special Interest Group on Microarchitectures, and former Vice-Chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Technical Committee on Microprogramming and Microarchitectures. He is past Chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Awards Committee, and past co-Chair of the IEEE-CS Industry Advisory Board. Rich is an IEEE Fellow, and regularly participates on the IEEE-CS Fellows Committee.

Rich has participated in intellectual property lawsuits, including patent, copyright, and trade secret. Rich has testified in many of these lawsuits, both as an expert for a party and also as a court-appointed expert. Rich has written articles and presented lectures on the subject of reverse engineering, including how to perform it and how to prevent it. Rich has performed, and testified about clean room development.

Rich currently consults on special projects for computer manufacturers, software companies, investor groups and law firms. He is on the technical advisory board of various private software and hardware companies.