Paul Weaver is a Chair in Lightweight Structures at the University of Bristol and until recently was its Engineering Faculty Research Director. He also directs the Advanced Composite Centre Innovation and Science's (ACCIS) Centre for Doctoral Training. He has published in excess of 200 refereed papers, has 5 patents and graduated 25 PhD students. He has worked on composite structures and their design since 1987, firstly at Newcastle University and what was then Courtauld's Aerospace on his PhD with braided tube structures, before joining Prof Mike Ashby and his materials selection research group as a postdoc at Cambridge University. Paul then joined Bristol University in 1998, becoming an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow from 2002-2007 and then gaining his Chair in 2009. During this time Paul was a regular visitor and consultant to NASA Langley on buckling and postbuckling design methods of plate and shell structures. He has worked with Airbus on various projects since 1999 and has delivered methods for coupled stress/temperature modelling for what was then the A3XX, buckling solutions for anisotropic plates, optimisation methods for composite plates, design for stringer plate terminations and most recently on spatially variable stiffness composite plates. His anisotropic blade concept for the BERP IV blade is flying on AgustaWestland EH101 helicopters.