2024 APEGS Award Recipients

At an awards banquet in Regina SK on Thursday, March 7, 2024, APEGS celebrated the exemplary competence of the following award recipients to foster professional excellence among members, inspire the next generation of professionals, and raise awareness of the role of engineers, geoscientists, and APEGS to protect the public.

Brian Eckel Distinguished Service – Dr.  Terry Fonstad, P.Eng., P.Ag., FEC, FGC (Hon)

Terry has spent the past 35 years of his career supporting food security through environmental engineering for animal agriculture as a consulting engineer and professor of engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. He believes the privilege of education comes with the obligation to give back and has served on local municipal council, APEGS council and executive and currently serves on several industry boards of directors. To learn more, check out this video.

Outstanding Achievement – Dr. Philip LePoudre, P.Eng.

Philip’s work at Nortek Data Center Cooling and the University of Saskatchewan led to the commercialization of a completely new liquid to air membrane exchanger technology with a wide range of application in air treatment and cooling for the HVAC industry. He has over twenty inventions related to exchanger and cooling system design, and is currently developing power and water efficient cooling solutions for the rapidly growing data center market. To learn more, check out this video.

McCannel – Dr. Sumith Kahanda, P.Eng.

With over a decade of dedication, Sumith has been at the forefront of engineering and managing water and wastewater projects, ensuring communities thrive through sustainable water solutions. Beyond his professional achievements, he passionately mentors the next generation of engineers and selflessly serves as a volunteer, inspiring a brighter future in engineering communities. To learn more, check out this video.

Exceptional Engineering or Geoscience Project – RMD Engineering Inc. – Emergency Use Ventilators

As the COVID-19 pandemic started overwhelming healthcare systems around the world, Jim Boire and his team decided to design and manufacture an emergency use ventilator. In 42 days RMD Engineering Inc. had developed and achieved 3rd party approval and submitted to the federal government for approval, and within nine months their ventilator received COVID-19 Medical Device Authorization from Health Canada. Along the way, RMD Engineering’s subsidiary, One Health Medical Technologies became Saskatchewan’s first licensed medical device manufacturer. To learn more, check out this video.

Environmental Excellence – Petroleum Technology Research Centre Inc. – Aquistore

Petroleum Technology Research Centre’s Aquistore deep saline CO2 storage project is the first project in the world injecting and permanently storing captured CO2 from a coal-fired power station. Since injection began in 2015, almost 600,000 tonnes of CO2 have been stored 3.2 km underground in the Deadwood deep saline aquifer, which is like removing 150,000 cars from the road for a year. The project has also contributed to advancing monitoring technologies like fiber optics and set point seismic sources – helping other industries to advance CCS to lower their GHG emissions. To learn more, check out this video.

Promising Member – Jenae Nixon, P.Eng.

Since becoming a professional engineer in 2022 Jenae has mainly worked on the geotechnical inspection, monitoring, risk assessment, rehabilitation, dam safety review, and design of dams and water infrastructure in the province. She contributes time to the profession on the Licensee Admissions Committee and Regina Geotechnical Group as well as to her community through curling and the South East Regional Science Fair Committee. To learn more, check out this video.

Friend of the Professions – Dr. Dominique Turcotte

As a Lead Environmental Protection Officer at the Ministry of Environment, Dr. Dominique Turcotte helps the public, engineers and geoscientists understand waste and industrial facility permitting requirements, contributing to safeguarding the environment for a sustainable future. To learn more, check out this video.