Awards and recognition
SFU announces 2025 honorary degree recipients
Simon Fraser University is proud to bestow honorary degrees on nine outstanding individuals making lasting, transformative impacts in their respective fields and inspiring the university’s class of 2025.
SFU’s honorary degree is the highest honour conferred by the university. The degrees are awarded to distinguished individuals in recognition of their scholarly, scientific or artistic achievement, or in recognition of exceptional contribution to the public good.
The honorary degrees will be conferred during convocation ceremonies in the spring and fall. For more information on this year’s convocation and the honorary degree recipients, visit the convocation website.
June honorary degree recipients:
Iyál' (Vanessa) Campbell
Skwxwú7mesh sníchim, the language of the Squamish people, has been the life’s work of educator and Elder Iyál' (Vanessa) Campbell for more than 50 years. By learning from past and present Elders, working with other dedicated teachers and students to preserve and revitalize the life of the language, Campbell is working to ensure the wealth of knowledge within traditions and the breadth of culture of her people is not forgotten by future generations.
David Marmorek
David Marmorek is an aquatic ecologist with an international reputation for bringing together people, science and tools to tackle complex environmental challenges. He has worked in North America, South America and Asia for four and a half decades to protect and restore ecosystems affected by pollution, dams and other human activities. He’s an adjunct professor with SFU’s School of Resource and Environmental Management and is the lead scientist at ESSA Technologies Ltd., an environmental consulting company based in Vancouver.
Azra Raza
A renowned oncologist on the frontiers of finding a cure for cancer, Dr. Azra Raza has mentored hundreds of medical students and inspired countless others. She is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and the clinical director of the Edward P. Evans Foundation MDS Centre, supervising a state-of-the-art research lab. Her best-selling book, The First Cell: And the human costs of pursuing cancer to the last, inspires readers on their own journey with cancer.
Ogwi’low’gwa Kim Recalma-Clutesi
Matriarch, scholar, academic and cultural mentor, traditional knowledge-holder, teacher, writer, filmmaker, community leader, cross-cultural interpreter: these are the many roles of Ogwi’low’gwa Kim Recalma-Clutesi. A member of the Qualicum First Nation, where she served as elected Chief, she is deeply committed to helping share Indigenous Peoples’ values and perspective to the non-Native World. She has devoted her life to upholding traditional Indigenous rights, knowledge and values through teaching and advising archaeologists, government ministries and cultural organizations.
Mary-Woo Sims 沈明麗
Mary-Woo Sims 沈明麗 has had a long and distinguished career in human rights at every level of society, protecting the rights of all Canadians. As Chief Human Rights Commissioner for British Columbia, she was among the first calling for legislative changes to include protections for transgender people and those living in poverty. Sims, who began her career in the labour movement, has won provincial, national and international awards for her social justice work.
Barry Truax
A trailblazer of electroacoustic and computer music, Barry Truax has had a monumental impact on the world of sound. Truax taught at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication and School of Contemporary Arts for over 40 years. In that time, he established the school’s music program, the Glenfraser Endowment and received an Excellence in Teaching Award. He led the World Soundscape Project since 1975 and developed the first computer system that allowed for real-time granular synthesis, empowering generations of composers.
October honorary degree recipients:
Cindy Blackstock
Cindy Blackstock, a Gitxsan human rights advocate, is at the forefront of addressing inequalities impacting First Nations children, youth and families. As the executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada and a professor at McGill University, her unwavering compassion and dedication to children has led to successful landmark human rights cases resulting in thousands of new services to support families.
Francis Halzen
A visionary physicist whose work influences a generation of particle physics students and who continues to make breakthroughs that expand our understanding of the universe, Francis Halzen remains at the forefront of an emerging area in science. A Vilas and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Halzen is the principal investigator of IceCube, an Antarctic neutrino telescope that observed the first-ever evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic rays in 2017.
Zacharias Kunuk
Zacharias Kunuk is an Inuk filmmaker and cultural activist whose groundbreaking work revolutionized Inuit and other Indigenous representations in cinema and brought their stories to global audiences. Kunuk’s film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was the first ever written, directed and acted in the Inuktitut language. It won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001 and was named the best Canadian film of all time in a Toronto International Film Festival poll.