rcndeinfo@ndevr.org.uk

Academic expertise

Academic expertise

Our academic partners offer a wide range of expertise including ultrasonic bulk and guided waves, thermographic, electromagnetic, advanced optical and non-contact methods. They also have access to world-class capabilities in transduction and sensor technology, physical measurement, theoretical modelling, materials science, mechanical engineering, structural integrity, signal processing, data analysis and visualisation, and the design of automated systems. They also have experience of working with a broad spectrum of industries including aerospace, automotive, power generation, nuclear, oil and gas, chemical processes, food, railways, steel and instrumentation companies. Key academics include:

University of Bristol

  • Anthony Croxford is Professor of Ultrasonics and Dynamics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include guided wave structural health monitoring; defect classification and quantification using ultrasound; and dynamics and control of fluidised beds. Anthony is a founder of a spin-out company, Inductosense Ltd.
  • Bruce Drinkwater is Professor of Ultrasonics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include ultrasonics; Non-Destructive Testing (NDT); ultrasonic arrays; and ultrasonic particle manipulation. He is the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Future Innovation in NDE (FIND CDT).
  • Paul Wilcox is Professor of Dynamics and Control in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. A Turing Fellow and RCNDE’s Academic Director, his main research interests centre around ultrasound, signal processing and imaging applied to Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) of safety-critical components and structures. Paul has worked on applications ranging from critical welds in nuclear power stations through to testing the ripeness of avocados, and is a founder of a spin-out company, Inductosense Ltd.

 

University of Bristol Ultrasonic and Non-Destructive Testing group’s website

Imperial College London

  • Fred Cegla is a Reader in Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering. His main focus is experimental measurement and monitoring of defects and structural properties of engineering components, aiming to solve real-world industrial problems. Fred set up the spin-out company Permasense Ltd which is now the world’s number one provider of ultrasonic corrosion monitoring systems to the oil and gas industry.
  • Peter Huthwaite is a Reader in Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering. His interests include imaging in ultrasonics and radiography, with a focus on limited data imaging. Peter has also worked on numerical methods for ultrasonic simulation, and he wrote the software package Pogo which is a GPU-accelerated FE solution.
  • Michael Lowe is Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering. His interests include structure-guided ultrasound, wave theory, wave scattering, materials characterisation, and analytical and numerical modelling. A Fellow of the RAEng, Mike is a Director of Guided Ultrasonics Ltd and he was the creator of the leading software modelling tool DISPERSE.
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Imperial College London Department of Mechanical Engineering website

University of Manchester

  • Tim Cootes is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Division of Informatics, Imaging & Data Sciences. His research has concentrated on constructing statistical models of the shape and appearance of objects in images, and in developing algorithms to match such models to new images.
  • Mohamed Missous is Professor of Semiconductor Materials and Devices in the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. His areas of expertise include Molecular Beam Epitaxy of high speed InP-based transistors, low temperature THz materials and sub-millimetre wave Resonant Tunnelling Devices. Among other things, Mo leads an STFC, Innovate UK and EPSRC programme in 2DEG Quantum Well Hall Sensors for the RCNDE.
  • Anthony Peyton is Professor of Electromagnetic Tomography in the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. His interest in electromagnetic instrumentation came from having originally been the Principal Engineer at Kratos Analytical Ltd, where he developed precision electronic instrumentation systems for magnetic sector and quadrupole mass spectrometers. Tony now heads up multiple research projects including ‘A Smart Metal Detector to detect and locate threats (e.g. handguns and knives) for more accurate, efficient and cost-effective security screening’.

University of Manchester Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering website

University of Strathclyde

  • Anthony Gachagan is Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. His research interests encompass ultrasonic transducers and arrays, power ultrasound, robotics and automation, industrial process control, bioacoustics, thermosonics and the application of coded excitation techniques. 
  • Charles MacLeod is a Senior Lecturer in Electronic and Electrical Engineering in the Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering (CUE). His research is primarily associated with the inspection and manufacturing enhancement of high-value assets and components, where he leads a number of high-profile inter-disciplinary in-process welding and metal additive research projects.
  • Theodosia Stratoudaki is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering. Her research is focused on sensing and imaging using light to generate and detect ultrasound. This capability is used for remote ultrasonic phased array imaging with applications in remote non-destructive evaluation, in process evaluation and material characterisation.
  • Gareth Pierce is Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering in the Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering (CUE). The focus of his work is robotics and autonomous systems for inspection, including non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) for manufacture, and structural health monitoring (SHM) for asset inspection. Gareth also manages an applied NDT technology transfer laboratory, FIRST (Facility for Innovation and Research in Structural Testing) with an £11 million project portfolio.

University of Strathclyde Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering website 

University of Nottingham

  • Matt Clark is Professor of Optics and Photonics in the Faculty of Engineering and the Head of the Optics and Photonics research group. His research covers a wide range of interdisciplinary subjects in optics, ultrasonics, nano and meta materials and instrumentation and he is an internationally-recognised expert in NDE/T and Laser Ultrasonics, with over a hundred publications in these areas.
  • Richard Smith is Assistant Professor in Optical and Electronic Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering. His research interests include high frequency ultrasonics for nanoscale sensors, imaging and measurements on biological cells as well as SRAS development for aerospace applications.

University of Nottingham Optics and Photonics research group website

University of Warwick

  • Professor Steve Dixon is Director of the Centre for Industrial Ultrasonics (CIU). His research interests include ultrasonic transduction, ultrasonic measurements of material properties, thermographic methods and ultrasonic flow measurement, among others. Steve is also a Director of spin-out companies Sonemat Ltd and Eddysense Ltd.
  • Dr Rachel Edwards is a Lecturer in PX385, Condensed Matter Physics in the Department of Physics. Her research interests include non-contact generation and detection of ultrasound, modelling of ultrasound using PZFlex, non-destructive testing and cryogenic ultrasonic measurements of single crystals.
  • David Hutchins is Professor of Engineering in the Centre for Industrial Ultrasonics (CIU). His research interests are in the design and fabrication of ultrasonic systems, including transducers and sensors formed by micromachining techniques.

University of Warwick Centre for Industrial Ultrasonics  website

University of Liverpool

  • Dr William Christian is a Lecturer in the Mechanical, Materials & Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Liverpool. His research is focused on the characterisation of defects in structural materials using optical stress and strain measurement techniques such as digital image correlation and thermoelastic stress analysis. 

University of Liverpool Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering  website 

University of Southampton