Sports Turf Research Institute exec announces retirement

Gordon McKillop, Ph.D., chief executive of the Sports Turf Research Institute (STRI), has announced he will retire in the Spring of 2016. McKillop has held the position since July 2000 and joined STRI from what was then the Central Science Laboratory, a Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) agency.

The STRI is a consultancy and research organization based in Bingley St Ives, near West Yorkshire, England, that provides services for the research, design, construction and management of sports turf.

“McKillop considers himself to have been incredibly lucky to have been able to manage a business such as STRI, to have been behind the scenes of many sporting events at local, national and international levels, and to have worked as part of a dedicated, knowledgeable and incredibly enthusiastic team,” according to STRI.

“When I started, I told the interview panel that I had three aims for the business: to develop more scientifically and technically based services, to make the business more commercially orientated and to raise the STRI brand to an international level,” McKillop says. “I am pleased to look back and know I have taken the business some way down each of these three roads.”

Highlights from his term in office include growing the core UK business during the recession and winning contracts with UEFA, FIFA and the London Olympics, as well as establishing STRI in Australia.

McKillop will be succeeded by Mark Godfrey, who has been with the organization for 10 years and is currently the financial director and managing director of the STRI in Australia.