Bornat's research interests includes program proving in separation logic. His focus is on the proof themselves; as opposed to any logical underpinnings. Much of the work involves discovering ways to state the properties of independent modules, in a manner that makes their composition into useful systems conducive.

Bornat (in conjunction with Bernard Sufrin of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory) developed Jape, a proof calculator; he is involved in research on the usability of this tool for exploration of novel proofs.

Richard Bornat's PhD students have included Samson Abramsky in the early 1980s.

In 2004, one of Bornat's students developed an aptitude test to "divide people up into programmers and non-programmers before they ever come into contact with programming." The test was first given to a group of students in 2005 during an experiment on the use of mental models in programming. At the end of the experiment, Bornat delivered a talk entitled "Dividing the Sheep from the Goats".

Bornat published a book entitled "Understanding and Writing Compilers: A Do It Yourself Guide", which is regarded as one of the most extensive resources on compiler development. Although it has been out of print for some time, he has now made it available as an online edition.

Other publications from Bornat include:

• Richard Bornat and Harold Thimbleby; 1989; The life and times of ded, display editor; in J.B. Long & A. Whitefield (eds); Cognitive Ergonomics and Human-Computer Interaction; Cambridge University Press; pp. 225—255.
• Richard Bornat and Bernard Sufrin;1999; Animating Formal Proof at the Surface: The {Jape} Proof Calculator; The Computer Journal; Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 177—192.
• Aczel, J. C., Fung, P., Bornat, R., Oliver, M., O’Shea, T., & Sufrin, B.; 1999; Influences of Software Design on Formal Reasoning; in Brewster, S., Cawsey, A. & Cockton, G. (Eds.) Proceedings of IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT '99; Vol. 2; pp. 3—4; Swindon, UK, British Computer Society; ISBN 1-902505-19-0.
• R. Bornat; 2000; Proving Pointer Programs in Hoare Logic; in Backhouse & Oliviera (eds) MPC 2000; LNCS 1837; pp. 102—126.
• C. Calcagno, P. O’Hearn, R. Bornat; 2002; Program Logic and Equivalence in the Presence of Garbage Collection. To appear in Theoretical Computer Science special issue on Foundations.