After completing a BA, MA & PhD, in Engineering and at Churchill College, he worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board where he developed and applied early computer-based flow simulation methods to steam turbine operational problems.

Returning to Cambridge in 1984 as a Lecturer, and to Churchill as a Fellow, he then worked on a range of numerical methods – now called Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) – aimed at predicting fully 3D viscous flow in turbomachines.  His structured blade-to-blade Navier-Stokes code (BT0B3d) became the industry standard design tool and was licenced to over 50 companies & organisations around the world via the University’s technology exploitation process, the Wolfson Industrial Unit & Lynxvale Ltd..

From 1996 Bill was the Francis Mond Professor of Aeronautical Engineering in the Engineering Department.

Next, he developed a state-of-the-art, solution-adaptive unstructured version of this software (NEWT) and then, inspired by advanced computer graphics and physics-based animation, BOXER, a seamless integration of solid geometry modelling, mesh generation, geometry editing and flow simulation. These were commercialised & exploited by Cambridge Flow Solutions Ltd. based on the Science Park.

Bill is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Aeronautical Society and is a Chartered Engineer.