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 Sub-Committee. If there is only one nomination, then the NDT Sub-Committee 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 NDT Sub-Committee. 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 NDT Sub-Committee or by the President.
Committee: NDT Sub-Committee.
Winners
2023 winner: Professor Gareth Pierce
The Anne Birt Award for 2023 is awarded to Professor Gareth Pierce.
Gareth has been involved with the world of non-destructive testing (NDT) since working as a summer intern for the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) while completing a BSc in pure and applied physics and his PhD in laser ultrasonics at the University of Manchester (1993). After graduation, he worked on numerous European collaborative research and development (R&D) projects, particularly focusing on structural health monitoring (SHM) and machine learning applied to ultrasonic inspection in the aerospace and energy sectors. Working in industry as Principal Optical Engineer for Corning Cable Systems, he was responsible for NDT of transcontinental backbone optical fibre networks all around the world. He then moved back into academia and in 2006 was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, where he was tasked with leading activities around robotic delivery of NDT. His team initially concentrated on small custom robots for structural asset inspection (culminating with on-site NDT inspections at Sellafield), before Gareth shifted focus in 2009 into robotic NDT inspection for manufacturing, for which he is perhaps most widely recognised. Working closely with the automation supply chain, Gareth has built a network of industrial and academic collaborations, supported by the UK Research Centre in Non-Destructive Evaluation (RCNDE), TWI, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) and Spirit AeroSystems, among others, where numerous large-scale automated NDT inspection demonstrators have been delivered. Holding a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Research Chair with Spirit AeroSystems, Gareth has helped to translate low technology readiness level (TRL) university research, through mid TRL at Catapults and into industry applications. In 2009, he founded SEARCH, an applied technology transfer laboratory at the University of Strathclyde, which he has grown into a £37 million technology transfer capability focusing on NDT for composites, metal additive manufacturing and metal joining technologies. Together with the Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering (CUE), of which Gareth is Co-Director, the Strathclyde team now exceeds 100 people, making the group one of the largest applied NDT research groups globally.
Gareth’s work has always straddled the boundary between the related disciplines of NDT and SHM, which are now more than ever seeing increased alignment as environmental challenges demand increased whole lifecycle performance from our engineering structures. Looking to the future, Gareth’s interests are focused on the next-generation robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that will deliver new solutions for demanding NDT and SHM applications.
He is delighted to accept the Anne Birt Award for 2023 and wishes to acknowledge the strong support of all his research team over the years and the wider support from his academic and industry-based colleagues.
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
2022 Guillaume Pierre
Details of all Institute awards can be found here.
