Paul Blackwell

I am Director of Knowledge Exchange located within the DMEM Department, University of Strathclyde. I am Chair of the Technical Board of the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC). The Technical Board is  responsible for the definition and governance of the £1.8m pa core research programme. I am also Principal Investigator for a range of CR&D projects collectively worth about £3m. My background consists of a mixture of industrial and commercial research with particular areas of expertise around metallurgy and manufacturing. 

I have worked in both industrial (Doncasters Forgemasters, Mettis Aerospace) and commercial (QinetiQ) research as well as previously spending time in academia at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in High Performance Materials at the University of Birmingham. I joined the University of Strathclyde in 2010. 

My research interests focus on the interaction of materials processing conditions, microstructure and final properties. To support this I am a specialist in materials characterisation and work extensively with process modelling. I have many years of experience in working with titanium and nickel based alloys in particular. My PhD was on the mechanisms of superplasticity in aluminium alloy and I have retained an active involvement in the technology / science of superplasticity having run several major CR&D projects on the high temperature forming of titanium. 

For three years I was the Engineering Director of the AFRC and played a major role in building and leading the (then) 80 strong research and engineering team.