Professor Mike Hinton to Receive Outstanding Contribution Award at Composites UK Awards Dinner

Composites UK informed that Professor Mike Hinton will be honored with the prestigious Outstanding Contribution to the Composites Industry Award, sponsored by Zund, at the upcoming Composites UK Awards Dinner, taking place on October 30th at the National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham. Professor Hinton’s career has been distinguished by his leadership in pioneering composites technologies, beginning with senior technical and management roles within the Ministry of Defense (MoD), the Defense Research Agency, and later QinetiQ. His expertise played a pivotal role in introducing the first use of composite structures in safety-critical weapon systems, such as the NLAW rocket motors, now integral to SAAB’s LAW MBT. During his time as MoD/Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) Chief Scientific Officer (land), Professor Hinton launched the Technical Fellows community, serving as Dean, where he fostered a collaborative environment for experts in composites research and development. One of Professor Hinton’s most influential initiatives was the Worldwide Failure Exercise (1992–2014), a 22-year project designed to evaluate different failure theories for predicting how composite materials respond under stress. This pioneering effort has left a lasting legacy in the global composites community and culminated in Professor Hinton being inducted as a World Fellow of the International Committee on Composite Materials (ICCM) in 2019. In addition to his technical contributions, Professor Hinton has also played a strategic role in shaping the composites industry in the UK. As the inaugural technology director of the National Composites Centre (NCC) and later the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC), he has been instrumental in guiding the development of technical capabilities that are vital to the industry’s growth. Since 2017, he has chaired the CIMComp Advisory Board.