The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority’s Sievert Prize

The prize – SEK 25,000 – is awarded annually during the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority’s (SSM) National Radiation Safety Day. Supervisors or examiners of theses at Swedish higher education institutions can nominate students they have supervised or examined during the preceding academic year. This means nominations for the 2026 prize must concern theses approved during the 2025–2026 academic year. Both Bachelor’s and Master’s level theses can be nominated. The prize can also be shared between two students who have completed a thesis together. The student does not need to have graduated to be nominated for the prize.

The  prize winner [NM1] is expected to attend the National Radiation Safety Day and give a presentation of their work. Travel and accommodation expenses are covered by SSM.

Jury

Submitted nominations are evaluated by an independent jury that selects the winner based on the thesis’s contribution to radiation safety in Sweden, as well as its quality regarding both analysis and reporting. The jury consists of SSM employees and members of SSM’s Research Advisory Committee. The final award decision is made by SSM’s Research Advisory Committee.

Nominations

Nominations must include:

• A digital copy of the thesis report 
• A justification for the nomination of approximately one half to one A4 page 
• A description of the thesis’s contribution to radiation safety in Sweden
• The names of the student(s), supervisor, higher education institution, and degree program

Nominations must be sent by the supervisor or examiner no later than September 1st via email to forskning@ssm.se. Questions can also be directed to the same e-mail address.

Rolf Sievert – a pioneer in radiation protection

The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority’s Sievert Prize is named after the Swedish physicist Rolf Sievert. He is widely regarded as the father of radiation protection and championed radiation protection issues at both national and international levels. Sievert invented several instruments for measuring radiation, founded a number of radiation protection organizations, and developed methods for measuring radiation doses in medical treatments. Rolf Sievert was the head of the Institute of Radiophysics, whose regulatory division was reorganized into the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute in 1965. The Swedish Radiation Protection Institute and the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate merged in 2008 under the name Swedish Radiation Safety Authority.

Rolf Maximillian Sievert was born in 1896 and passed away in 1966.

In 1977, the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU), on the recommendation of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), advocated that the unit Sievert should be used for effective and equivalent dose. In 1980, the Sievert became an international SI unit (Sv).