Since 1982 he has led a series of European research projects in artifical intelligence and natural language processing (LOKI, KADS-II, DELIS, COMPASS  ).

From 1988 to 1993 he co-ordinated UK government support to this field, in particular initiating the SALT programme in Speech and Language Technology. He was in the early 1990s Chairman of the  UK SALT Club, and an early proponent of the   British National Corpus.  He is on the Committee of the   IEE Professional Group for Speech and Language Processing.

Since 1991 he has been managing director of Linguacubun Ltd. He is regularly called in for advice to the   European Commission,  to the   UK Department of Trade and Industry,  and   Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, as well as a number of university departments with language processing interests, and internet start-up companies.

He is a Visiting Fellow in European Studies and Modern Languages at the   University of Bath, and an Honorary Fellow in Linguistics at   Lancaster University.

Besides these business activities, he pursues research in the languages of Central and South America, and is also President of the   Foundation for Endangered Languages.

He lives and works at Batheaston Villa, just outside Bath, in England.