Jeff starts his first President’s Message with reflections on CRPA’s success in Halifax—he says the dedication of CRPA members really shone at the first post-Covid conference. Over the summer, he says CRPA has started to work on the logistics of hosting the CRPA(R) exams separate from the conference this fall and hints at some exciting learning and growth opportunities being mapped out by the Professional Development Committee.
Over the years, Dave has written a lot about the benefits of attending conferences, not the least of which are the relationships people build at these events. In this editorial, he remembers one of his first “conference friends,” Adelene Gaw, who passed away in June, was a constant presence within CRPA, as well as the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA). She was also a regular contributor to the CRPA Bulletin. She will be missed.
Grant had to miss the recent CRPA conference in Halifax to attend RadSynch23—a conference held every other year for radiation safety personnel from synchrotron facilities around the world. Grant says the research and experiences shared at the conference (which he summarizes in his editorial), coupled with meeting and renewing contact with synchrotron radiation protection colleagues, makes attendance at the conference invaluable.
Regular readers of the CRPA Bulletin have come to expect Dave Niven, chief editor, to interview incoming CRPA presidents. In this issue, Dave continues his interview series by talking with Jeff Fleming, CRPA’s president-elect. Jeff tells us about his job as an inspector in the Operations Inspections Division at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, about joining CRPA when he was looking for a network of professionals to help him grow and learn, and about the CRPA board of directors’ plans to launch a naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) taskforce.
Dave was very excited to be writing an editorial for the first conference issue of the CRPA Bulletin since 2019! While he concedes that there may be a bit of conference rust to shake off after four years, he is looking forward to the professional development, networking, and socializing—especially at the hospitality suite, which he says is one of the things that make the CRPA conference stand out from other events. He has no doubt that everyone attending the conference in Halifax this year will make up for lost time.
Each year CRPA’s Students and Young Professionals Committee organizes the Anthony J. Mackay Student Paper Contest in conjunction with the CRPA conference. The contest is open to all students enrolled full-time in a Canadian college or university program related to radiation sciences. From among the submissions, three finalists are selected and given the opportunity to present their work in a plenary session at the conference. These are this year’s finalists.
The 6th International Symposium on the System of Radiological Protection (ICRP 2021+1) was held in Vancouver on November 7 to 10, 2022. Here are some of the highlights from the event.
Every year, CRPA’s Student and Young Professionals Committee organizes the Anthony J. MacKay Student Paper Contest. The 2022 contest was held in conjunction with the ICRP2021+1 Symposium in Vancouver, BC, in November 2022.Two prizes were awarded this year, one for the best overall presentation (international) and the best Canadian presentation.
In this issue, we’ve invited a couple of people who recently prepared for and successfully completed the CRPA(R) registration exam — Devin Sullivan and Laila Omar Nazir — to tell us about their experiences. We asked them to tell us why they wrote the exam, how they prepared, what their strategy was for writing the exam, and what advice they would give to someone thinking about writing the exam.
