Bill Dawes is the Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge University. After completing a PhD at Cambridge in 1979 he worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board where he developed numerical methods for steam turbine operational problems. Since returning to Cambridge in 1984, he has worked on a range of numerical methods aimed at predicting flows in turbomachinery. His research has been widely published and successfully exploited commercially with industry and research institutions around the world.