RAPS Awards Program

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Honoring excellence. Celebrating leadership. Advancing the profession.

The RAPS Awards Program recognizes and celebrates regulatory professionals who demonstrate exceptional commitment, innovation, and service. Each year, we celebrate individuals from across the globe whose work strengthens public health and elevates regulatory practice.

These awards reflect the highest standards of professional achievement.

Award Categories

Recognizing excellence across the profession. RAPS presents several prestigious awards each year, including:

  1. Founder’s Award – Honoring lifetime achievement and sustained leadership
  2. Community Leadership Award – Recognizing exceptional service and engagement
  3. Rising Star Award – Celebrating emerging leaders
  4. Patient-Centered Health Award – Highlighting patient-focused innovation
  5. Article of the Year Award – Recognizing outstanding thought leadership

Each award reflects RAPS’ commitment to excellence and integrity, and all awardees will be recognized each fall at RAPS Convergence.

RAPS Awards

The Founder’s Award

The Founder’s Award recognizes exemplary regulatory professionals and is the profession’s highest award.

Honorees have:

  • Shaped regulatory policy and practice.
  • Made a positive impact on the profession through education and mentoring.
  • Volunteered time to leadership pursuits such as serving on the RAPS board or Fellows’ program.
  • Promoted healthcare and patient well-being.
  • Advanced regulatory agility.
  • Raised awareness of the value of regulatory.

The Community Leadership Award

The Community Leadership Award recognizes RAPS members who have built networks and supported regulatory professionals in their communities.

Awardees have:

  • Served as RAPS ambassadors.
  • Engaged for at least three years in chapter or local activities, including networking and outreach.
  • Partnered with other organizations to further the profession.
  • Provided thought leadership in the regulatory profession via conference presentations or authorship.

Rising Star Award

Rising Star Award recognizes promising individuals early in their career who demonstrate initiative and exhibit a passion for strengthening the community. Awardees demonstrate great promise as an early-stage professional by:

  • Being actively involved in the regulatory community.
  • Engaging in education and networking to expand their knowledge and skills.
  • Volunteering with a regulatory/quality/related professional organization.
  • Actively participating in professional events/conferences.
  • Engaging in relevant online discussion forums.
  • Regularly going above and beyond at work.

This award is intended to recognize individuals who are at Levels 1 and 2 of the RAPS Regulatory Competency Framework.

Patient-Centered Health Award

Patient-Centered Health Award recognizes groups, organizations or individuals who have made a significant impact to advance patient-centered policy, product development or regulatory decision making. Candidate organizations:

  • Promote patient-centric healthcare to improve the lives of patients and caregivers.
  • Partner with regulators/HCPs/governments/NGOs/industry to advance patient-centric regulatory decision making.
  • Provide education that has raised awareness of the challenges faced by patients and caregivers.
  • Been in the industry for more than three years.

This award is a periodic, special recognition of no more than two organizations each year. It is geographically neutral and lifecycle agnostic. Ideally, awardees will have a RAPS connection, but this is not mandatory. Award winners will be announced publicly to promote the importance of public health within regulatory policy and frameworks.

Article of the Year

Article of the Year celebrates the most thought-provoking feature article published in Regulatory Focus in the year prior to Convergence. This honor is awarded based on the recommendations and judgment of an expert panel of RAPS volunteer authors. To be selected, an article must be:

  • Clear and easy to read.
  • Improves knowledge of an important regulatory topic.
  • Useful and applicable to issues in the reader's daily work in regulatory, quality, or a related field.

2026 Nomination Process

The 2026 RAPS award nomination process is now open. Do you know someone who goes above and beyond? RAPS wants to know because we rely on our member community to tell us who has made a difference to you – the members. We encourage you to support the RAPS awards program by nominating your peer for recognition. To submit a nomination:

  1. Complete the 2026 RAPS Award Nomination Form
    1. Choose the Award:
      • Community Leadership Award: recognizes RAPS members who have built networks and supported regulatory professionals in their community.
      • Rising Star Award: recognizes promising individuals early in their careers who demonstrate initiative and exhibit a passion for strengthening the community.
    2. Nominee's Information
    3. Please tell RAPS in detail why you are nominating this individual and provide any supporting documents.
    4. Your Information
  2. Complete the 2026 RAPS Award Nomination Form no later than Friday,3 April 2026, at 11:50 EDT.
  3. For questions, contact Julie Gordon, Director, Membership.

We appreciate your recognizing your colleagues and representing the regulatory profession in the world we live in today.


Meet RAPS Awardees

2025 RAPS Awardees

2025 Founder’s Award Recipients

Gert Bos
Gert Bos, Ph.D.
Executive Director & Partner, Qserve
Alberto Grignolo
Alberto Grignolo, Ph.D., FDIA
Editor-in-Chief, DIA Global Forum
Peter Barton Hutt
Peter Barton Hutt
Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling LLP
Susan Stewart
Susan Stewart, JD, LLM, RAC, FRAPS
Chief Regulatory Officer, Rezolute Bio, Inc.  and Candel Therapeutics, and Advisor, The Termeer Foundation
 

2025 Community Leadership Award Recipients

Silu (Lulu) Zhang
Silu (Lulu) Zhang, MSc, RCC-MDR, RCC-IVDR
Director of Global Regulatory Affairs – Medical Devices/IVD at Changchun GeneScience Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
Qianqian Zhu
Qianqian Zhu, MBA, LLM, RAC
Director of RAQA for China, Hong Kong, and Macau at Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

2025 Rising Star Award Recipients

Attrayee Chakraborty
Attrayee Chakraborty, MS, MSc.
Quality Systems Engineer at Analog Devices (ADI)
Akanksha Kulshreshtha
Akanksha Kulshreshtha, PhD, MS, RAC-Devices
Manager, Regulatory Affairs, FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc

2025 Article of the Year Award

Akanksha Kulshreshtha
Akanksha Kulshreshtha, PhD, MS, RAC-Devices
Manager, Regulatory Affairs, FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc
Medha Sateesh Bharadwaj
Medha Sateesh Bharadwaj, MS
Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist at Intuitive.

 

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