Awards

We strive to deliver brilliant solutions to important problems faced by business, government and society today, and tomorrow. As a leader in innovation and technology we are continually winning awards from our peers, from industry and from government. Below is a summary of some of our most recent awards.

Team TopSat earns RAeS award
December 2007
At the Royal Aeronautical Society awards ceremony for 2007, the team responsible for the successful TopSat Earth observation mission, was awarded the Society's Silver Medal.

Click here to view more information on TopSat.

The Engineer Technology & Innovation Awards 2007
December 2007
The Large Company and University Collaboration Award was won by the Argus project (a team with members from BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, QinetiQ and Oxford and Southampton Universities). They joined forces to devise ways for computer systems to work together and make decisions where many variables are unknowable.

Click here for information on the winners.

QinetiQ has been short listed as a finalist for the IET Innovation in Engineering Awards (Software in Design Category).

The QinetiQ submission is based on CLawZ (Control Law Z) - "An efficient process of developing verified control law implementations."

The Innovation in Engineering Awards are to be presented at the IET Awards presentation evening/celebration dinner at The Marriott, Grosvenor Square, London on Tuesday 13th November 2007.

For more information, please click here.

Early Career Woman Physicist of the Year
March 2007
Elaine Baxter, who works in QinetiQ’s space division, has been recognised in the inaugural Institute of Physics Early Career Woman Physicist of the Year award. Elaine, operations manager for the TopSat micro-satellite, was selected as one of two runners-up from a shortlist of the best 18 nominations.

The awards recognise the achievements of young female physicists in their academic and work careers but also for undertaking activities to support or encourage others in the field.

As TopSat operations manager Elaine is responsible for managing the payload operations team and acting as QinetiQ’s technical liaison to customers and the TopSat Consortium. TopSat is a micro-satellite system that provides high resolution imaging of the Earth quickly and at low cost. The system is specifically designed to meet operational timescales, whether for disaster relief, news-gathering, or other applications where speed of response is vital.

Best of British Award Winner

QinetiQ was awarded second place in the Innovation in Industry category at the inaugural Best of British Industry Awards, held at The Tate Modern on Thursday 8 February 2007.

The award was given for "exceptional innovation that has driven performance improvement". Lord Bhattacharyya, one of the judges, also commented on the encouraging way in which technology companies such as QinetiQ had found markets for their products.

The judges were particularly impressed by two technologies emanating from QinetiQ's optronics centre in Malvern – ZephIR, a wind resource measurement tool which is playing a key role in wind farm developments across the world, and QinetiQ's 3D foot gauge which has sparked the imagination of shoe retailers on both sides of the Atlantic.

More than 200 companies subjected themselves to rigorous scrutiny to compete for the awards which were sponsored by Amec, the Work Foundation and The Sunday Times. The Work Foundation used online questionnaires, telephone interviews and visits to produce three-page profiles of each company which were scrutinised by judges who included Sir Digby Jones, Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to government, and John Waples, business editor of The Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times published a special report on the award winners on 11 February 2007 and featured the winners of the innovation category under the headline "Bright ideas in demand."

QinetiQ was also listed in Management Today's top five most admired companies 2006 for its capacity to innovate.

TopSat wins Popular Science Grand Award

TopSat, the micro-satellite designed and built by a QinetiQ-led consortium of British firms, was crowned as the Aviation and Space Grand Award Winner at Popular Science’s 2006 Best of What’s New Awards.

TopSat received the Aviation and Space Grand Award – the top award for aerospace technology, from Popular Science, the best selling science and technology magazine in the world. The magazine’s editors sifted through thousands of entries before concluding that TopSat, which provides high resolution images of the earth at low cost, is an innovation that has the potential to change satellite and space reconnaissance technology.

Click here for more on TopSat

QinetiQ success at Defence Technology Exchange Awards 2006
QinetiQ's Tarsier runway debris detection system was awarded the top honour for technology transfer from defence to civil markets at this year's Defence Technology Exchange Awards. The radar system, which detects Foreign Object Debris, is in use at Vancouver International Airport and has been ordered by Dubai.

Tarsier was one of three QinetiQ technologies to pick up awards at the glittering ceremony held at the Science Museum, London, UK on 30 November.

Borderwatch, a 24/7 scanner that has already detected hundreds of stowaways hiding in trucks at the Channel tunnel, picked up the award for homeland security innovation.

ZBD Displays Ltd, a QinetiQ venture, won the award for innovation in the supply chain for their zero-power point of purchase displays that are in use by a number of leading UK retailers.

In addition to their top award, Tarsier also scooped the crown for sensor technology innovation.

In all 9 QinetiQ technologies were short-listed for awards which were organised by the Defence Diversification Agency in conjunction with the Shepherd Group and the Daily Telegraph.

The Frost & Sullivan Strategy Leadership Award 2006
On 16 November 2006 QinetiQ was presented with an award for its work in the development and commercialisation of defence technologies. The Frost & Sullivan Strategy Leadership Award 2006 recognises QinetiQ’s status as a leading European force in this area. The award was accepted on behalf of QinetiQ by Peter Hutton, Group Marketing’s Head of Research and Market Planning.

The judges commented that QinetiQ’s knowledge-base and extensive experience in defence technology incubation is expected to position the company as an indispensable partner. With mission critical expertise and a long track-record with UK MOD, QinetiQ is established as the partner-of-choice for programmes requiring sophisticated project management and systems integration skills.

Paul Verhaert awarded the Order of Leopold
November 2005
In front of an audience that included the royal family and Belgian astronauts, Paul was awarded the Order of Leopold by the president of the Chamber, Herman De Croo (pictured).

Paul is the founder and director of the company that bears his name, which was acquired by QinetiQ in 2005. Verhaert Space, based in Antwerp, specialises in the construction of micro-satellites.

Verhaert Space website

The Queen's Birthday Honours awards
June 2005

Two QinetiQ scientists are featured on the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2005 for services to the UK Defence Industry.

Adrian Mears, ex-Technical Director of QinetiQ, who played a key role in transforming the defence research establishments into one entity, was awarded the Commander of the British Empire (CBE). Adrian has applied himself tirelessly to turning defence-funded research to the benefit of the armed forces and wealth creation in the UK.

He has been a powerful influencer of UK defence research policy and promoted the achievements of the research community through his leadership of the Journal of Defence Science over many years, among other achievements.

Ken Edwards, Targeting Technical Leader in Air Division, was awarded the Officer of the British Empire (OBE). Ken's pragmatism in the approach to the research he is responsible for has led to digital targeting equipment that is in operational service in the Jaguar and Harrier aircraft and the UK and European Forward Air Controllers.

Ken has written a considerable amount of technical papers and won a Best Paper award at a NATO RTO Military Communications conference in Rome.

British Communicators in Business national award
May 2005

iQ, the QinetiQ inhouse magazine, received an award in the British Communicators in Business national awards.

The magazine won Class Winner in the internal magazine category and the award was presented to the team by newsreader Trevor McDonald at a ceremony at the end of May 2005.

Simon Hardaker, Head of Internal Relations, said: "We are very proud to have won this award which is testament to the team's efforts to use best practice in all our employee communications."

Security Industry Innovation award
May 2005

QinetiQ's high sensitivity GPS team scooped an award at the Security Industry Innovation Awards at the IFSEC exhibition in May 2005.

The team, from Malvern, were awarded with the award for best new electronic, communication or internet protocol product for its Q20 GPS chip which is 1000 times more sensitive than standard GPS devices and has already achieved considerable commercial success.

The award is well timed, coinciding with the launch of a new version of the software supporting the module, further increasing the chip's performance.

More on GPS

Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents award
May 2005

The Engineering Training Centre at Boscombe Down has been awarded with an award for its good health and safety management.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Gold Award was presented at a ceremony during the Annual Health and Safety Expo in Birmingham on 18 - 19 May 2005.

Christopher Applebee, who collected the award on behalf of QinetiQ said: "This is a great honour and testament to the hard work that goes into maintaining a high level of health and safety. This clearly demonstrates the company's commitment to the achievement of high levels of performance in this area."

Technical Co-operation Programme Award
April 2005

Scientists from QinetiQ and Dstl have been awarded the Technical Co-operation Programme (TTCP) for its research collaboration project on red phosphorous.

Tony Cardell, represented QinetiQ's pyrotechnics group in receiving the award, which was presented by Lord Bach, Minister for Defence Procurement, on 27 April 2005.

Red phosphorous is a very versatile material and is used for military signalling and smoke screening, but can have safety and reliability problems due to poor chemical stability. The research carried out by the TTCP collaboration will lead to greater understanding of the problems and the development of safer and more reliable versions in the future.

Ministry of Defence GEMS award
January 2005

Michael Fooks, from the Frigates Combat System Engineering Team at Portsdown Technology Park, has been presented with a GEMS award from the MoD for his work on CSE analysis software.

Michael has discovered a capability gap in the CSE analysis toolset, and subsequently has developed software to translate data generated by Frigates navigation equipment into a format readable by the current suite of CSE analysis software.

The software produced by Michael enables a more accurate and comprehensive assessment to be made of a ship's combat system and the associated radar/sonar sensor performance.

He also has produced supporting procedures and documentation for the software.

Michael was presented his GEMS award at a ceremony carried out by the Portsmouth Naval Base Commander, Commodore Hussein on 25 January 2005.

ISPO Award for Outdoor Product
February 2005

A backpack designed by QinetiQ's Design Innovation Group, in collaboration with Berghaus, won the ISPO award for Outdoor Product at the international sports ISPO in Munich in February 2005.

The revolutionary Bioflex backpack is manufactured by Berghaus, the leading outdoor products company. The product was developed by QinetiQ's Design Innovation Group and Berghaus' own design and marketing specialists.

The backpack is designed to move with the body and has a distinct exoskeleton which enables it to be completely adjustable and provide high levels of comfort.

Press Release

Tarsier wins The Wall Street Journal's Innovation Award for Transportation
October 2005
Judges for the Wall Street Jounal's Innovation Awards commended Tarsier for the way that it addressed a serious transportation problem. QinetiQ was the only non-American company to win a category.

Visit The WSJ website