The William Gardner Award

Award criteria

Purpose: For the best paper published in the Proceedings of the NDT Annual Conference by a person in the early stages of their career (subject to a satisfactory oral presentation). The person concerned (or one of them, if there is more than one author who qualifies) must also present the paper in person at the conference and, at the discretion of the session chair, answer any questions from the audience.

Details of the award: A certificate and a cash sum of £300. Also, free membership of the Institute at an appropriate grade for one year.  

Eligibility: The author of the paper must either be a student or within the first five years of full-time employment. He/she need not be a member of the Institute. In the case of multiple authorship, the early career-stage criterion must be satisfied by the first or second named author. If other authors also satisfy the criterion, the cash award is shared between all those authors satisfying the criterion, with each receiving a certificate. The free membership for one year is for the presenting author only. 

The proposal regarding the first or second named author aims to ensure that the person being presented with the award has made a substantial contribution to the paper. Otherwise, there is a risk that the award could go, for example, to a multi-author paper having just one early career-stage author who only played a minor role in the work being reported.

Frequency: Yearly, if a suitable candidate is deemed.

Nomination arrangements: The author of an abstract and full paper for the event can indicate they wish to be considered when submitting online.

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, subject to a satisfactory oral presentation.

Entries: Entries should be submitted by selecting the BPA option on Manuscript Central.

Awarding arrangements: The award will be made mainly on the basis of the quality of the written paper, rather than on the quality of the oral presentation. This will allow the judging process to be completed before the conference. However, a check will be made to ensure that the quality of the oral presentation of the proposed winner is acceptable. Furthermore, candidates should demonstrate by the way they present the paper and answer any questions that they have made a substantial technical contribution to the paper.

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

Presentation: The prize will normally be presented at the end of the NDT Annual Conference, though another appropriate Institute event may be chosen if necessary.

Committee: NDT Sub-Committee.

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Winners

2023 winners: M Valdivia Camacho, M Munko, F Cuthill, C Ó Bradaigh, E McCarthy and
S Lopez Dubon

The William Gardner Award for 2023 is awarded to M Valdivia Camacho, M Munko, F Cuthill,
C Ó Bradaigh, E McCarthy and S Lopez Dubon from the University of Edinburgh, UK, for their paper, titled: 'Parasitic effects of load introduction points in full-scale composite tidal turbine
blade tests'.