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 nights' 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.

Winners

2025 winner: Professor Gareth Pierce 
Sponsor: No sponsor 

The Roy Sharpe Prize for 2025 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) whilst completing his BSc in pure and applied physics and his PhD in laser ultrasonics at the University of Manchester (1986-1993). 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 the testing and certification of transcontinental backbone optical fibre networks all around the world. He then moved back into academia andwas appointed in 2006 as Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, where he was tasked with leading activities around robotic delivery of NDT for the UK Research Centre in Non-Destructive Evaluation (RCNDE). Working closely with the automation supply chain, Gareth has built a network of industrial and academic collaborations, supported, amongst others, by BAE Systems, TWI, the High Value ManufacturingCatapult (HVM Catapult) and Boeing, where numerous large-scale automated NDT inspection demonstrators have been delivered. 

Holding a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair with Boeing, he has helped to translate low technology readiness level (TRL) university research, through mid TRL at Catapults and into industry applications. In 2009, he founded the Sensor Enabled Automation Robotics & Control Hub (SEARCH), an applied technology transfer laboratory at the University of Strathclyde, which he has grown into a £50m technology transfer capability focusing on in-process NDT for composites, metal additive manufacturing and metal joining technologies. Gareth is Academic Director for RCNDE and is Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering (SRPe) Theme Chair of Robotics & Autonomous Systems in Scotland. He sits on the Defence Materials Centre of Excellence (DMEx) Maritime Materials Technical Working Group, the British Standards Institution (BSI) committee for additive manufacturing standards, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Engineering Strategic Advisory Team (SAT) and the Scientific Committee of the European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring (EWSHM). He is Chair for the next EWSHM, sponsored by BINDT, to be held in Glasgow from 3-7 July 2028.

Past winners:		Sponsors:
1988	Dr M G Silk	Du Pont (UK) Ltd
1989	Prof W D Dover, Dr R Collins and Prof D H Michael	British Aerospace (Space Systems) Ltd
1990	Dr R K Chapman	Stanger Consultants Ltd
1991	Prof R E Challis	RTD Quality Services
1992	Mr C Baxter and Dr A T Jones	Fuji Photo Film (UK) Ltd
1993	Prof G Hayward	AEA Sonomatic
1994	Dr R V Booler, Dr D E Hook and Mr J E Pearce	Amersham QSA
1995	Dr P Cawley	Lavender International NDT Ltd
1996	Mr R A Smith	Minton, Treharne & Davies Ltd
1997	Dr C B Scruby	IMF Technical Services Ltd
1998	Dr A McNab	DERA Farnborough
1999	Prof W Lord	Peak NDT Ltd
2000	Dr G-R Tillack	Royal & Sun Alliance
2001	Prof S B Palmer	A T Roffey & Co Ltd
2002	Prof R Dewhurst	Innogy plc
2003	Dr D Harrison	Sercal NDT Equipment Ltd
2004	Dr J Tyrer	Ultramag Inspection Systems Ltd
2005	Prof R Bruce Thompson	South West School of NDT
2006	Prof D Almond	RSL (Aberdeen) Ltd
2007	Dr M Toft	AGR Field Operations
2008	Prof P Nagy	TWI Ltd
2009	Prof B Drinkwater	Ardrox Engineering
2010	Prof M J S Lowe	Inspectahire Instrument Co Ltd
2011	Prof G Dobmann	Lavender International NDT Ltd
2012	Prof K Balasubramaniam	Ultrasonic Sciences Ltd
2013	Dr J Rose	Composite Inspection Ltd
2014	Prof C B Scruby	TSC Inspection Systems
2015	Prof Dr U Ewert	South West School of NDT
2016	Professor Paul David Wilcox	South West School of NDT
2017	Professor Steve Dixon	IMechE Engineering Training Solutions
2018	Dr Roman Gr Maev	WesDyne
2019	Dr Martin Spies	No sponsor
2020	Professor Anthony Gachagan	No sponsor
2021	Professor Tony Peyton	No sponsor
2022	Dave Lines	No sponsor
2023	Professor Michael Todd	Ultramag Inspection Services Ltd
2024	Dr Marija Bertović	No sponsor

A nomination form can be downloaded here.

Details of all Institute awards can be found here.