Dr. Chris Parkinson is co-founder, Chairman and CEO of RealWear®, the maker of the industry standard head-mounted computer for frontline teams.

Dr. Parkinson is the primary inventor of the HMT-1 headset and the associated hands-free user experience that drives it. Dr. Parkinson’s specialty is in high-accuracy speech recognition systems especially in ultra-high noise environments. Prior to his CEO role he served as RealWear’s Chief Technology Officer.

Prior to RealWear, Dr. Parkinson lead the technology development of the “Golden-i” series of head mounted computers that paved the way for RealWear’s flagship and original HMT-1. His work at Kopin Corporation covered 9 years of R&D, $30M of research money, and resulted in more than 100 patents around head-worn computing and 5 generations of headset devices.

Dr. Parkinson left Kopin in 2015 to form the company that became RealWear. His first six months were focused on obtaining a world-wide, perpetual license to all the headset computing technology, software and patents from Kopin. With license in hand, he then worked with the other founders to realize the company that is today, RealWear. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree (with honors) in Chemistry from University of Manchester, UK, and a PhD in Computational Chemistry and Molecular Visualization, also from University of Manchester. He moved to the USA in 1996 and has remained a North-Westerner for much of that time, currently residing in Washington State.