The COMADIT Prize

Award criteria

Purpose: The COMADIT Prize is awarded annually by the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing to recognise a significant contribution over a period of at least 5-10 years through research and development in any branch of condition monitoring to the benefit of industry or society.
 
Details of the award: The prize will be in the form of a certificate and will be backed by a cash sum of £350. Invitations to sponsor the prize will be issued each year to all Corporate members of the Institute. When more than one organisation desires to be the sponsor, the selection shall be by lot. The sponsor’s name will be prominently mentioned in all publicity associated with the prize for the year in question and will be featured on the Honours Board at the Institute HQ.

Eligibility: The prize may be won by any research worker or group. 

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.

Frequency: The prize will be awarded annually and will only be issued if 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 CM Technical Committee (CMTC). If there is only one nomination, then the CMTC 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 CMTC. 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 prize will normally be presented at the CM Annual Conference during the Conference Dinner by the Chair of the CMTC.

Committee: CM Technical Committee.

Winners

The COMADIT Prize for 2022 is awarded to Tim Stevenson, who holds multiple patents and is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed publications on piezoelectric and ultrasonic sensors for extreme environments. He has acted as industrial supervisor for several doctoral candidates in the field of ​piezoelectric materials and ultrasonics and has held visiting positions with the School of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Leeds. In 2019, he was made Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and currently sits on BINDT’s Condition Monitoring Sub-Committee.

Tim is Co-founder and Managing Director of Ionix Advanced Technologies, which has grown to become a world leader in ultrasonic condition and process
monitoring.

Graduating from the University of Leeds with an MEng in materials science and completing a PhD in 2010, Tim’s thesis was on the development of a novel high-performance piezoelectric (HPZ) ceramic capable of operating in extreme environments, such as those involving high temperatures and radiation, and offering unique properties such as high fracture toughness and magnetoelectric behaviour.

In 2011, Tim co-founded Ionix with the aim of commercialising the piezoelectric ceramics and developing condition monitoring (CM) sensor systems around it, which quickly found applications in ultrasonic dryness monitoring of industrial steam lines. He received a Gold Award and the title of ‘Early Research Career Engineer’ at the Westminster SET for Britain Awards for the impact of his research.

Tim and his team at Ionix incorporated the HPZ material into an innovative, modular, intrinsically safe high-temperature ultrasonic platform and, since 2015, a primary focus for this has been high-resolution remaining wall thickness measurements. HotSense has now been integrated into the fabric of energy infrastructure on six continents for on-stream corrosion monitoring of downstream refinery, petrochemical and nuclear plant piping circuits and pressure vessels up to 550°C and in hazardous or potentially explosive atmospheres.

The HotSense platform has subsequently been expanded to enable flare gas monitoring, clamp on flow, molten salt health sensing, crack growth monitoring and acoustic emission-based equipment and structural health monitoring across a plethora of industries, including the renewable energy, aerospace and automotive sectors.

As such, Tim is now globally recognised as a technical authority and thought leader in extreme environment ultrasonic condition monitoring, contributing to technical committees and academic panels in North America, the UK and Europe.

Past winners:		Sponsors:
2008	Prof A D Hope	Laser Optical Engineering Ltd
2009	Dr T Holroyd	J R Technology and RMS Ltd
2010	Mr C Pearson	Staffordshire University
2011	Dr M Walters	RMS Ltd
2012	Mr S Mills and Mr D Whittle	SpectraQuest Inc
2013	Mr S Greenfield and Mr D Shorten	Ardrox Engineering
2014	Dr J Twiddle and Dr S Muthuraman	PCN Working Groups
2015	Mr K Seaborne and Dr J H Yebra	PCN Working Groups
2016	Professor Len Gelman	PCN Working Groups
2017	Professor Ling Wang	PCN Working Groups
2018	Professor Andrew Starr	PCN Working Groups
2019	Professor Siamak Noroozi	PCN Working Groups
2020	Professor Andrew Ball	PCN Working Groups
2021	David Manning-Ohren	PCN Working Groups