The Dunlap Award was established in 2013 thanks to a generous gift from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto.
The award is to be presented in even-numbered years, to an individual or team for the design, invention, or improvement of instrumentation or software that has enabled significant advances in astronomy. To be eligible, the nominee, or leader of a nominated team, must be a member of CASCA in good standing and a Canadian astronomer or an astronomer working in Canada.
The award consists of a monetary prize and a certificate. The recipient shall be invited to address the Society at its Annual General Meeting. The nomination package must be submitted entirely in electronic form to the Chair of the Awards committee and should consist of:
- A letter of nomination (self-nominations are accepted) detailing the specific achievement for which the candidate is being nominated, and providing evidence that the achievement has had a significant impact in the field;
- The CV of the nominee;
In addition, three external letters of support (e.g., from international experts in the nominee’s field). No letter should exceed two pages in length and should be sent directly to the Chair of the Awards committee (to ensure confidentiality of references).
No other material should be submitted. The deadline for nominations for the 2024 Dunlap Award is January 15 2024.
2022 Dunlap Award
CASCA is pleased to announce that Dr. JJ Kavelaars is the winner of the 2022 Dunlap Award.
This award recognizes his leadership at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. Over the past five years in which Dr. Kavelaars has been head of the CADC, it has provided public access to its largest number of telescope archival datasets, expanded a key initiative to bring high-performance distributed cloud computing services to Canadian astronomers via the Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomical Research (CANFAR), and laid the groundwork for new archives and processing environments for the upcoming JWST, Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and the Square Kilometre Array. He received his PhD from Queen’s University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University. He is now a Senior Research Officer at NRC-Herzberg in Victoria as well as an adjunct professor at UVic, where in addition to leading the CADC, he continues to make groundbreaking discoveries in the Kuiper Belt using ground and space-based telescopes as well as being a part of the New Horizons Mission team.
CASCA is delighted to recognize Dr. Kavelaars’s efforts with this award.
| 2020 |  Rene Doyon |
Infrared Instrument Development View Citation |
| 2018 |  Kipp Cannon |
Data analysis techniques to search for transients View Citation |
| 2016 |  Peter Stetson |
Photometry: Old and New View Citation |
| 2014 |  Matt Dobbs |
Technology-Driven Cosmology Today and Tomorrow View Citation |
