2025 CRPA Award Winners

Awards are a formal recognition for someone’s work, length of service, and dedication. When we grant an award, we bestow a title or gift to someone we believe is deserving or merits it.

The following awards celebrate not only longevity and loyalty but also commitment to an organization, profession, or calling. This year, like other years, we acknowledged some of our most dedicated and deserving members for their contributions to the Canadian Radiation Protection Association (CRPA) and/or the field of radiation protection.

Here are your 2025 CRPA Award winners:

 

Richard V. Osborne Founders’ Award

This award was named for CRPA’s founding president. It recognizes members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of the association nationally and internationally by encouraging participation in the association, advancing the role and stature of the association as an important organization in radiation protection, or promoting the merits of membership in the association. This year’s recipient was Liz Krivonosov.

Liz has been a CRPA member for over 25 years. With over 35 years of experience in risk management—from radiation protection to industrial hygiene and general safety—Liz is an internationally recognized speaker and award winner who has shared her practical experiences, coached and mentored a generation (or two) of radiation protection professionals, and promoted the benefits of the CRPA since her early days with the association.

Liz has taken on various roles in numerous committees. She was chair of the national Conference Committee and has been a member of multiple Ottawa Local Organizing Committees. She has consulted and provided training and seminars as part of the Professional Development Committee. She was also CRPA’s secretariat for almost 10 years, from 2006 to 2015.

Liz has advocated and continues to advocate for the association, even in retirement. She promotes CRPA at every opportunity, including at international conferences and congresses, such as the International Radiation Protection Association’s IRPA16 and the Laser Safety Institute of America conferences (even when laser safety wasn’t recognized in Canada).

As president of her consulting company, KRMC, she recruited, trained, and supported the growth of many CRPA members, further promoting their attainment of the CRPA(R) credential.

As a quiet observer of the operations of the association, Liz has also helped shape and advance the stature of the membership itself by nominating deserving CRPA members for our various awards year after year.

It is this leadership, commitment to capturing the mission and vision of CRPA, and volunteerism for the advancement of the association nationally and internationally that made Liz the 2025 recipient of the Richard V. Osborne Founders’ Award.

 

Raymond G. Ilson Leadership Award

This award, named after a long-serving member and past president, recognizes members who have demonstrated leadership within CRPA or the radiation protection profession—those have gone above and beyond contributing to the profession. This year’s recipient was David Niven.

Dave has been a member of CRPA since 2009. With a wide-ranging career as a registered radiation protection professional and certified health physicist, Dave has worn many hats in and outside the association. From his earliest days as a CRPA member, Dave quickly got extensively involved in many committees and held many roles within the association. He was an active member of the Local Organizing Committees for conferences in Winnipeg and Toronto, served as director on the CRPA board of directors for multiple terms, and is a past president of the board of directors.

Dave was instrumental in the development and continued success of the Student and Young Professionals Committee, building bridges internationally with young professionals in other radiation protection associations.

Under his leadership as chair of the Communications Committee, many new processes were implemented, and outdated processes were improved. He also tackled the redevelopment of the archaic CRPA website. Dave was recognized for this work in 2013, when he was presented with the CRPA Meritorious Service Award.

In his most recent roles, Dave served as the chief editor of the CRPA Bulletin, transitioning the publication from its former print version to an online publication that has increased readership beyond the CRPA. He has also been the Communications Officer for the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) for the past three years.

Dave has continued to serve CRPA and hone his leadership skills as chair of this year’s successful conference in Hamilton. For his extensive and continued commitment to the radiation protection profession and the association, and for going above and beyond as a volunteer within the radiation protection community, Dave has been honoured with the Raymond G. Ilson Leadership Award for 2025.

 

Meritorious Service Award

This award is presented to a member in recognition of significant contributions to either the association or the general radiation protection community. This year’s recipient was Donata Chaulk.

Donata joined CRPA in 2010. After obtaining her CRPA(R) in 2018, she began serving the association in various capacities, including serving several terms on the board of directors. She was on the Local Organizing Committees for the 2010 and 2024 Edmonton conferences.

Donata was also at the helm of the Professional Development Committee during the Covid-19 pandemic. She led the charge during the pivot to our current online professional development program that uses a learning management system.

In her last term on the board, Donata was also an advocate for increasing CRPA’s profile in the naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) industry. Donata has led by example to make CRPA a better organization, and she is deserving of the Meritorious Service Award for 2025.

 

Adelene N. T. Gaw Young Professional’s Service Award

This award was introduced in 2024 in memory of a highly admired and respected young CRPA professional. It is presented to a member early in their career who has demonstrated exemplary service within the association. This year’s recipient was Alicia Douglas.

Alicia has been a member of CRPA since 2023, joining the same year she graduated from McMaster University. She was quickly recruited to the Bulletin Editorial Board as the student and young professional advisor. She also served on the 2025 Local Organizing Committee for the annual CRPA conference in Hamilton, ON.

Following her first CRPA conference experience in 2024, Alicia quickly learned the importance of CRPA membership for new graduates and began marketing and promoting the association’s benefits to other young professionals. This recruitment continued with her involvement in the conference committee and her extensive work on the hugely successful tour program that improved the conference experience for new and old members alike.

It is Alicia’s dedication to CRPA from such a young age and immediately following graduation that is truly impressive. This demonstrates her passion, commitment, and leadership—all values synonymous with the Adelene N. T. Gaw Young Professional’s Service Award.

 

Anthony J. MacKay Student Paper Contest Winner

Each year, CRPA’s Student and Young Professionals Committee organizes a student paper contest in conjunction with the annual conference. Three finalists present their work at the conference and the winner is presented with the Anthony J. MacKay trophy at the awards banquet. This year’s winner was Olivia Sharp, who just completed her second year of coursework in the Medical Radiation Science, Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Technology program through the University of Toronto and The Michener Institute of Education at University Health Network (UHN). You can find out more about Olivia in this interview, and you can find the abstract for her paper, “Lens of Eye Dose Assessment for Nuclear Medicine and PET Technologists,” in the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin.

 

Honorary Lifetime Membership

Honorary lifetime members are individuals who have been deemed by members to be persons worthy of lifetime membership in the association. Nominees must have been full members for at least 10 consecutive years and made significant contributions to the field of radiation protection or to CRPA. Nominations must be approved by the member at an annual general meeting. This year, Dr. Jing Chen was made an honorary lifetime member.

Jing has been an active CRPA member since 2001. She has been promoting CRPA internationally for many years, facilitating the development of partnerships and collaborations between CRPA and many international and national organizations, including the Canadian Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists (CARST), the Health Physics Society (HPS), and the Chinese Society or Radiation Protection (CSRP).

Jing is an award-winning senior research scientist and the section head of the Radiological Impact Section at the Radiation Protection Bureau of Health Canada. Her research activities and expertise include external and internal dosimetry and microdosimetry, radiation protection and management, radiation health risk assessment, and radiological impact on the environment.

She is an editorial board member of Radiation Environmental Biophysics, Radiation Medicine and Protection, and Radiation Environment and Medicine. She is a key player in Canada’s National Radon Program. She has worked on various expert groups and has been the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) for numerous terms.

Her contributions helped in the development of the Canadian drinking water and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) management guidelines, the Radioactivity Working Group of Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, and the Management of Radioactivity in Drinking Water (World Health Organization Expert Group).

Her numerous achievements include being honoured with CRPA’s Distinguished Achievement Award and Founder’s Award for her outstanding contributions to the field of radiation protection and CRPA. She was also the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor General of Canada.

---

Past CRPA award winners

For profiles of past award winners, see the following CRPA Bulletin articles:

• 2024 CRPA Award Winners: Matt Bernacci, Christopher Malcolmson, Grant Cubbon, Sandor Demeter, Shayenthiran (Shayen) Sreetharan, and Gary Hughes
• 2023 CRPA Award Winners: Sunil Choubal and Jill Robertson
• Ed Waller Receives the 2022 CRPA Meritorious Service Award
• 2021 CRPA Award Winners: Carole Savoie and Jeff Fleming
• 2020 CRPA Award Winners: Jeff Sandeman, Daniel Lapkoff, and Bryan McIntosh
• 2019 CRPA Award Winners: Jing Chen, Tony Waker, Joe Cortese, and Ali Shoushtarian
• In Memory of Nicholas Sion: a founding member of CRPA and the recipient of the 2012 Meritorious Service Award
• From the Archives: CRPA’s First Honorary Lifetime Member – Dr. Richard Osborne