Roy Sharpe Prize

Award criteria

Purpose: The Roy Sharpe Prize is to be awarded annually by the NDT Sub-Committee of the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing to recognise a significant contribution, over a period of at least 10-15 years, through research and development in any branch of NDT to the benefit of industry or society.

Sponsorship: Invitations to sponsor the cash prize will be issued each year to all organisations in Corporate membership of the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing. When more than one organisation is desirous of being 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 feature on the Honours Board at Institute HQ. The company that has sponsored the award will not be invited to participate in future years unless no other Corporate member wishes to do so.

Details of the award: Full-time registration at the NDT Annual Conference with three night's accommodation, a certificate and £350 cash.

Eligibility: The award may be won by any research worker or group of named research workers. This is intended to recognise a contribution over a period of at least 10-15 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: Yearly, if a suitable candidate is deemed.

Nomination arrangements: Nomination required. This should show the significance and the benefit to industry or society. Nominations should be submitted by email to: karen.cambridge@bindt.org

Nominations for the award shall come from the NDT Sub-Committee (nominations may also be submitted by any other BINDT Committee, in which case these shall passed to the Chair of the NDT Sub-Committee for consideration), which will be tabled as an agenda item at a meeting. 

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. The winner will present a plenary paper at the NDT Annual Conference Opening Ceremony.

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.  

The sponsoring organisation (when applicable) will be invited to decide who is to make the presentation and the person chosen will be the Institute’s guest at the Conference Dinner when the award is presented.

Publicity: The award will be fully reported in Institute publications.

Committee: NDT Sub-Committee.

2023 winner: Professor Michael Todd
Sponsor: Ultramag Inspection Services Ltd

In 2023, the Roy Sharpe Prize is funded by Ultramag Inspection Services Ltd and is awarded to
Professor Michael Todd.

Michael received his BSE (1992), MS (1993) and PhD (1996) from Duke University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He began his career as a Postdoctoral Fellow (1996), then a Staff Research Engineer (1998) and finally as Section Head (2000) at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in the Fibre Optic Smart Structures section. In 2003, he joined the Structural Engineering Department at the University of California San Diego, USA, where he currently serves as Chair and Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering. His research interests are in applying statistical signal processing techniques to structural health monitoring (SHM) applications, adapting Bayesian inference frames for uncertainty quantification and decision-making in SHM, developing novel ultrasonic interrogation strategies and optimising sensor networks. He has published over 600 journal papers and proceedings in these areas. Michael was awarded the 2005 Structural Health Monitoring Person of the Year Award, the 2016 Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) DeMichele Award, the 2021 SHM Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2023 SPIE Lifetime Achievement Award in NDT. He is a Fellow of SEM and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and is Managing Editor of Structural Health Monitoring, an international journal.