Three members of the UBC community are among the 41 recipients of The Royal Society of Canada's (RSC) prestigious 2026 awards.
A total of seventeen RSC Awards have been presented to eminent Canadian scholars, artists and scientists in recognition of their outstanding contributions to knowledge and their impact in Canada and around the world. In addition, the Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Prize has been awarded to 24 law students who demonstrate exceptional potential to advance equity and social justice in Canada.
Founded in 1882, the Royal Society of Canada is Canada’s senior national academy and exists to promote Canadian research and scholarly accomplishment in both of Canada’s official languages, to recognize academic and artistic excellence, and to advise governments, non-governmental organizations, and Canadians generally on matters of public interest.
UBC Awardees
Citations courtesy of the Royal Society of Canada
Prof. Zachary Hudson (Chemistry)
Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry
For outstanding research in chemistry
Zachary Hudson develops organic semiconductors for the electronics, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industries. He has worked with chemical industry to design more sustainable routes to plastic electronic materials, to use quantum algorithms in semiconductor design, and to develop materials that drive chemical reactions using light. He has also commercialized technologies for sustainable packaging to confront the global crisis caused by plastic waste.
Jamey Jesperson (History)
Alice Wilson Award
To three women of outstanding academic qualifications in the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences or Science who are entering a career in scholarship or research at the postdoctoral level.
Jamey Jesperson completed her PhD in History at the University of Victoria (2026) and is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia. Through deep archival research in nearly twenty historical institutions, Jamey’s dissertation recovered the records of fifty Indigenous transformed (trans) women who lived in the Pacific Northwest during the nineteenth century. Her postdoctoral project now aims to return as many of these women’s stories from colonial archives to Indigenous communities, specifically in B.C.
Julian Lam (Peter A. Allard School of Law)
Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Prize
The Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella Prize is presented annually to a graduating law student in each of the law schools in Canada who is most likely to positively influence equity and social justice in Canada or globally upon graduation.
Julian Lam is a UBC law student advancing more democratic and equitable approaches to technology governance and law. He has helped lead national initiatives bringing young Canadians into AI policymaking, convened international experts on participatory governance, and contributed to public scholarship through legal and policy research, writing for Canada’s National Observer, and appearing on CBC’s Power & Politics.
