Over 40 years of experience in the upstream oil and gas industry. Initially starting with Flopetrol-Schlumberger in 1980 as a well test and slickline engineer, progressing through to Schlumberger open-hole logging and then into operational and technical management positions.  Later joining British Gas in 1990 in the reservoir operations group, specialising in well performance optimisation and well testing, with responsibility for overseeing a number of new downhole technologies supported by British Gas.

In 1995, co-founded Sensa as the technical director.  Sensa was first to introduce downhole fibre optic distributed measurements for applications in the oil and gas industry.  The technology was extensively used for production and injection profiling and well integrity inspection. Sensa was purchased by Schlumberger in 2001.

Since 2002, Nigel has worked for a number of successful early-stage oilfield technology start-up companies, focussing on downhole sensing and well production optimisation technologies.

After completing a four-year MoD apprenticeship in 1996, Mark continued to university before returning to QinetiQ in 2000 as an Electronics Engineer within the Fibre Optic Sensing group developing fibre optic systems for acoustic and seismic applications. This technology was spun out as Optasense and, while still supporting the technology, Mark was transferred to the Electronics group in QinetiQ, designing sonar system interfaces for UK Naval platforms.

In 2009 Mark joined Paul Doust at DNV within a Norwegian group as Senior Electronics Engineer to develop Acoustic Resonance Technology for inline pipeline inspection tools following the success of their first trial of the technology. Mark was working on transducer testing as well as matching and optimisation techniques; remaining with the group when it was spun-out from DNV as ‘Halfwave’. As well as ILI-related acoustics, Mark and Paul were also involved in research into the tracking and delivery of cancer treatment drugs with an Oxford Biomedical company. Mark later continued from the development of transducer techniques to become Electronics Engineering Manager in 2017, leading the design of electrical system inspection tools ranging from 4 to 640 channels; systems capable of travelling over 1200 km.  Electro-acoustics remained at the centre of the system design.

Mark took on a new challenge in 2019 after being asked to join Cereus Downhole Technology to lead the development of the first Cereus Downhole inspection tool to use the ART technique developed at DNV in the hostile conditions of downhole wells.

Paul has over 34 years’ experience working on the development of advanced sonar systems.

On leaving school, Paul initially trained as a scientist at the Admiralty Research Establishment (ARE) on the Isle of Portland, UK. There he modelled the complex acoustic environments found in shallow coastal waters and evaluated novel signal processing techniques for future UK torpedo sonar systems.

In more recent years as a member of QinetiQ, Paul’s focus moved to the design of analogue/digital electronics and the associated real-time systems required to synchronously capture high fidelity signals from multi-channel distributed ADC systems covering sampling rates from 50Hz up to 80MHz.

Almost 50 years as an electronics engineer (1972 to date) with over 40 years of experience specialising in the design of active/passive ultra-wideband sonar systems over the frequency range 50Hz to 50MHz.

Specialist in the design of high-power analogue matching components and techniques to interface piezo-electric transducers to a wide range of power amplifiers both in fluidic (oil/water) and high-pressure gas mediums.

Inventor of equalisation techniques to remove all hardware and transmission medium distortion of the transmitted and received electro-acoustic waveforms.

Co-inventor of crack detection in gas pipelines.

Principal Scientist with DNV then Halfwave (2006-2018) and an original member of the team which was the first to successfully acoustically measure the properties and condition of a pipeline using Acoustic Resonance Technology (ART) in a high-pressure gas environment.

Consultant for Cereus Technology in the application of the above ultra-wideband (min 4 octave) electro-acoustic techniques into new, exciting and challenging environments.

Lecturer in Acoustics at Birmingham University

Chris has over 39 years’ experience working on the development of advanced sonar systems.

Chris joined the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (AUWE) on the Isle of Portland, UK. He then went to university to study Physics with Electronics. On his return he designed, built and tested preamplifier and ADC systems for future UK sonar systems.

This preamplifier and ADC system design work continued in QinetiQ and Atlas working for international customers. His last job at Atlas was a distributed preamplifier and ADC system.