Allan Sanderson, PhD, CPhys, FInstP, CEng, FIMMM is a world recognised expert in electron gun design, electron beam focusing, high speed beam deflection optics, beam characterisation and electron beam welding technology. He has over fifty years, experience in these fields. He pioneered the development of high-power electron beam welding, achieving significant advances using unique RF excited guns. This led to the establishment of many modern large scale Reduced Pressure EBW systems. He is the author of 8 patents and numerous papers and technical reports. He won the International Institute of Welding Yoshiaki Arata Award in 1998 for outstanding achievements in Fundamental Research in Welding Science and Technology. In 2006, he was awarded the Evgeny Paton prize for his lifetime contributions to the development of welding science, technology and education. In the last decade, he launched the development of unique high intensity, RF excited plasma electron beam sources.

More recently he has been working on the design, manufacture, development, and testing of new EMAT configurations for use on long-range testing of pipes, leveraging the synergies with his unique expertise of high frequency electromagnetic deflection of electron beams.