The Anne Birt Award
Open award for members and non-members
Award criteria
Purpose: The purpose of this award is to recognise significant contributions to technology innovation, technology transfer or technology strategy in the field of NDT over a period of at least 5-10 years.
Eligibility: Nominees can be individuals or groups who have made a significant contribution to NDT technology, either through R&D, technology transfer into industry or developing strategy leading to new technology development and exploitation. Nominations can be made for individuals who have undertaken these activities themselves or for those in management and leadership roles who have successfully facilitated such technology innovations. Nominations can relate to a specific technology innovation or for contributions to a number of innovations over their career, including those providing significant contributions in a support role.
This is intended to recognise contributions over a period of at least 5-10 years.
The proposer of the award should be a voting member of the Institute. If they are not, they will need to ensure the application is endorsed by an Institute voting member.
Details of the award: The award will consist of a certificate backed by £300 cash, an invitation to the NDT Annual Conference Dinner, including free registration for the day of the conference and one night’s accommodation. In the case of a group award, the invitation to the Conference Dinner will be made to one representative.
Frequency: It is anticipated that one award will be made annually, providing that suitable nominations are received.
Nomination arrangements: Nominations should be submitted by email to: karen.cambridge@bindt.org
Nominations for the award will be reviewed by the NDT Technical Committee (NDTTC). If there is only one nomination, then the NDTTC should vote to confirm whether the nomination is eligible and, if so, to approve the award.
If there is more than one nomination, then the entries should be sent for judging by a panel set up for the purpose. Four members of the panel are to be appointed by the NDTTC. Each judge will be invited to score the entries on a point scale of 0 to 3 and send the scores to Karen Cambridge, who will total the scores, and the entry receiving the most points will be declared the winner.
Awarding arrangements: The award will be made at the NDT Annual Conference Dinner and will be awarded by the Chair of the NDTTC or by the President.
Committee: NDT Technical Committee.
Winners
2022 winner: Guillaume Pierre
The Anne Birt Award for 2022 is awarded to Guillaume Pierre.
Guillaume Pierre started his career at Framatome, the French nuclear power manufacturer, before creating his own company, Sonaxis, which is still running in Besançon, France. After engineering studies in physics, Guillaume started working in the field of optics for scientific instruments in Paris. In 1993, he moved to the non-destructive testing (NDT) field, and in
particular to acoustics, in the early stages of phased array developments with the Technical Center of Framatome, Saint-Marcel, France. There, he progressively took over the responsibility of the design of ultrasound multi-element transducers and the manufacturing of single- or
dual-element transducers for nuclear inspections.
After realising that this sector was suited to entrepreneurship because of the potential of the phased array technology, Guillaume founded Sonaxis in 2002 at the Temis Microtechnology Park, where he could take advantage of the technology platform run by the regional group of research laboratories, Femto.
With the team at Sonaxis, Guillaume contributes to developing specific piezocomposite 1-3 technologies, high-frequency technologies and specific manufacturing methods, leading Sonaxis to carve out a place for itself in the growing market of transducers for NDT and ultrasound imaging systems.
When he first attended the BINDT Materials Testing exhibition in 2009, Guillaume had the opportunity to meet with recognised British companies in the field of NDT, in particular, the Rolls-Royce aerospace non-destructive evaluation (NDE) laboratories, and to start a long-standing and fruitful collaboration for the development of specific ultrasound array transducers.
Sonaxis has been a BINDT Corporate Member for more than ten years. Along with his team, Guillaume’s current focus is the development of technologies for manufacturing matrix frequency beyond 25 MHz and high-density transducers.
Past winners:
2016 Keith Newton and Peter Thayer
2017 Dr Stephen F Burch
2018 Professor Ian Cooper CEng FInstNDT MWeldI
2019 Marty Graen
2020 Eskil Skoglund Yngve Raudberget
2021 Dr Colin Brett
Details of all Institute awards can be found here.
