Each year, three finalists are selected in the Anthony J. MacKay Student Paper Contest to present their work at the CRPA conference. The presentations are judged and the winner receives a trophy and $250. In this issue of the Bulletin, Alicia interviews this year’s finalists!
CRPA president Corie Houldsworth looks back at CRPA’s past and at the history of radiation protection in Canada and beyond. She is also looking forward to what the future holds. She talks about how this ties in with this year’s conference theme: “Forging the Future.”
In this instalment of the Health Physics (HP) Corner, Jeff is checking the activity estimate for monazite ore, which nominally contains 10 MBq of Th-232. If the ambient dose equivalent gamma constant for Th-232 is essentially zero, why is the measurement at 10 cm more than 1,000 times as high as you might expect?
Scott Nichelson, from Texas, is CRPA’s self-proclaimed southernmost member. He is also a member of the Health Physics Society (HPS) and regularly provides updates on HPS events that might be of interest to CRPA Bulletin readers.
Each year, the Student and Young Professionals Committee organizes a student paper contest in conjunction with the CRPA annual conference. Three finalists are selected to present their work at the conference in a plenary session. These are the abstracts submitted by this year’s finalists.
The 2026 Canadian Radiation Protection Association conference will be hosted in partnership with the Canadian Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists in Saskatoon. The two associations have common goals and hosting the conference collaboratively will allow them to span a broader variety of topics.
TRIUMF, Canada’s national particle accelerator centre, has been pushing the envelope of subatomic physics research and innovation for over 50 years. TRIUMF’s radiation protection program has evolved as its research scope expanded. Initially focused on protecting workers from cyclotron radiation, safety measures now address diverse radiation types from various accelerators and experiments.
Last fall, the Radiation Safety Institute of Canada invited Jill Robertson, Ali Shoushtarian, Jillian Woods, and Pam Warkentin to share their experiences with radon testing in workplaces as part of a webinar panel. We are sharing some of that discussion with Bulletin readers.
This is the first in a series of articles exploring researchers and developments that set the stage for the radiological protection field we know today. We begin with Harriet Brooks, Canada’s first female nuclear physicist.
The most recent meeting of the Federal Provincial Territorial Radiation Protection Committee took place in October 2024. Learn more about the topics covered and presentations from federal members.
A new group called the Ontario Universities Radiation Safety Officers (OURSO) was formed by RSOs who recognized that they were experiencing similar challenges and would benefit from pooling their knowledge and experience. Their mandate is to reduce the risk of university research involving radiation and to engage with regulators.
In her inaugural message, interim chief editor Tanya Vlaskalin introduces herself to Bulletin readers, thanks outgoing chief editor Dave Niven, for the incredible job he has done over the past seven years, and introduces the theme for this annual conference issue: “Forging a Connection.”
