The William Gardner Award
Open award for members and non-members, Events Award, Publications 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 (subject to eligibility).
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.
Winners

The William Gardner Award for 2024 is awarded to X Bai, F Zhu, Z Xia, T Meng and W Yin from the University of Manchester, UK, for their paper, titled: 'Pose control and profile tracking with eddy current sensor and robotic arm for NDT applications'.
2002 Dr C Holmes
2003 Dr D Kleiner
2004 Dr C Holmes
2005 I Pettigrew
2006 D Caravaca
2008 A Sorsa
2009 C J Lane
2010 C Charlesworth
2011 Dr A Chertov
2012 Dr L Bai and E Escobar-Ruiz
2013 M Felice
2014 A McGilip
2015 J Rose
2016 F A Biruu, E Balaban, E Ahmad and M Missous
2017 D Zhang, K Burnham, L Mcdonald, C Macleod, G Dobie, R Summan and G Pierce
2018 Don Pieris
2019 J M Watson, C W Liang, J Sexton and M Missous
2020 No Award
2021 No Award
2022 Luka Bergbreiter
2023 M Valdivia Camacho, M Munko, F Cuthill, C Ó Bradaigh, E McCarthy and S Lopez Dubon
Details of publications awards can be found here.
Details of all Institute awards can be found here.