ICRU Elects Four New Members


26 June 2014


The ICRU Commission, at its annual meeting held 9-14 May, 2014 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA elected four new members to a four-year term. The new members are:

María-Ester Brandan is University Professor in the Physics Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, UNAM. Her present and past research includes a broad spectrum of subjects in experimental heavy-ion nuclear physics, radiation dosimetry and medical physics. She was the creator and present coordinator and teacher of the UNAM M.Sc. (Medical Physics) program. She has participated in more than 120 scientific publications and her h-index is

25. M-E Brandan is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Physical Society (Nuclear Physics Division) and Fellow of TWAS, the World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries. She has been President of the Nuclear Physics and the Medical Physics Divisions of the Mexican Physics Society and was awarded this society Medal for the Development of Physics in Mexico. In 2010-2013 she was Chair of the International Solid State Dosimetry Organization, ISSDO. María-Ester Brandan received the UNAM 2013 National University Award (PUN) in the area of Research in Exact Sciences.

Roger W. Howell is a Professor of Radiology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) where he serves as Chief of the Division of Radiation Research. Dr. Howell’s laboratory conducts research on dosimetry and radiobiology of internal radionuclides, with emphasis on the microscopic dose distributions encountered in nuclear medicine. He also studies the capacity of vitamins and other natural agents to protect reproductive organs, bone marrow, and the

gastrointestinal tract against damage caused by ionizing radiation. These efforts have led to over one hundred publications in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Howell teaches physics to radiology residents and provides educational lectures for emergency responders in New Jersey. He has served on review panels for federal agencies including NIH, DOE and other organizations. Dr. Howell is a member of the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, and he is a member of the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. He has served on several report committees of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU). Howell earned his bachelor and doctoral degrees in Physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Theodore (Rock) Mackie is a medical physicist. He grew up in Saskatoon and received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Saskatchewan in 1980. He went on to earn his doctorate in Physics at the University of Alberta in 1984. His expertise is in radiation therapy treatment planning, intensity modulated radiation therapy, medical devices including medical imaging systems and microscopy. He is a primary inventor and algorithm

designer of the helical tomotherapy concept. Dr. Mackie is an emeritus professor in the departments of Medical Physics, Human Oncology, and Engineering Physics, and an affiliate of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the Director of Medical Engineering at the Morgridge Institute for Research, a private not-for-profit medical research institute based in Madison. He has over 180 peer-reviewed publications, over 40 patents, and has been the supervisor for dozens of Ph.D. students. Dr. Mackie is a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the AAPM William D. Coolidge Award recipient Dr. Mackie was a founder of Geometrics Corporation (now owned by Philips Medical Systems), which developed the Pinnacle treatment planning system and still operates its R&D facility near Madison. He was a founder and Chairman of the Board of TomoTherapy, Incorporated, a public company now owned by Accuray but still based out of Madison. He is a co-founder of Madison-based HealthMyne an integrated cancer information system for use in radiology and oncology. He is on the boards of Shine Medical Technologies, a medical isotope production company and BioIonix a company dedicated to water purification in food production and processing. In 2002, Mackie was one of six Wisconsin regional winners of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Dr. Mackie has been a member of the board of the BioForward an organization supporting Wisconsin biomedical and medical device industries. He was a co-manager of Wisconsin Investment Partners, Wisconsin’s largest angel venture group. Mackie is the Chairman of the Board of the Center for the Assessment of Radiological Sciences, a not-for-profit promoting quality and safety in radiology and radiation oncology. He is the president of Advocacy Consortium for Entrepreneurship (ACE) a not-for-profit organization promoting academic entrepreneurship at the UW-Madison.

Brian O’Sullivan is a Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He also holds the Bartley-Smith/Wharton Distinguished Chair in Radiation Oncology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto. He received his medical degree from the National University of Ireland at University College in Dublin in 1976, and completed internship and general internal

medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. Additional postgraduate training includes a fellowship in medical oncology, and a residency and clinical fellowship in radiation oncology, all at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada. Professor O’Sullivan is the Head and Neck Oncology Program Chair at Princess Margaret Hospital and immediate past-Chair of the Head and Neck Oncology Committee of the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group (NCIC CTG). He is now the co-Chair of the US NCI Head and Neck Steering Committee, Coordinating Center for Clinical Trials, CTEP. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, and research grants. He has published almost 300 peer reviewed papers, in excess of 50 book chapters, and has written or edited 6 oncology textbooks. His interests includes sarcoma and head and neck cancer, translational research, IMRT delivery and the principles of image guided radiotherapy, chemo-radiotherapy and molecular targeting. He is a member of the TNM Committee of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), Chair of the UICC Prognostic Classification Sub-Committee and represents the UICC as head and neck cancer and sarcoma liaison to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC).