Physics Postdoctoral Fellowship and Certificate Program
The Physics Postdoctoral Fellowship program began with the arrival of Dr. X. Allen Li to the Department of Radiation Oncology in 2004. Dr. Li saw the need for the training of postdoctoral fellows in the area of medical physics and recruited the first physics postdoctoral fellow to train in the Department of Radiation Oncology. Past Postdoctoral fellows performed in-depth research as well as received comprehensive clinical training. The Postdoctoral Fellowship program has had nine fellows graduate from the program.
2009 began the evolution of two separate medical physics training programs, the continuation of the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the creation of the new Physics Residency Program. While the Physics Residency Program is a three-year program with a focus on clinical training along with two research semesters, the Physics Postdoctoral Program is for PhD candidates who would like to focus primarily on research with limited and optional clinical physics classes and training.
Realizing the need for a formalized certificate training program, the Department of Radiation Oncology applied for CAMPEP accreditation of the curriculum offered to our postdoctoral fellows. The Physics Certificate Program was CAMPEP accredited in 2013. At this time, the Medical Physics Certificate Program is an internal program only offered to current radiation oncology postdoctoral fellows.
Postdoctoral Fellowship positions vary dependent on available research and research funding. Postdoctoral fellows completing the Physics Certificate Program are able to apply to any CAMPEP accredited Physics Residency programs.
Anyone interested in applying for a postdoctoral fellowship can send a copy of their CV to Jessica Kotowicz. All CVs are reviewed by Dr. X. Allen Li. Qualified applicants are then contacted for further discussion.
Medical Physics Certificate Program Statistics
| Year | Applicants in year |
Accepted in year |
Graduated in year |
Accepted to residency in year |
Employed in clinical setting in year |
Employed in research setting in year |
| *2013 | 3 | 3 | NA | |||
| 2014 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 2015 | 4 | 4 |
2 | 2 | ||
| 2016 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2017 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
|
| 2018 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | ||
| 2019 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
*Program accredited by CAMPEP December 2013
Meet our Physics Postdoctoral Fellows
Asma Amjad, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research focused on performance evaluation of Deep Learning based auto-segmentation models
Laura Buchanan, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research focused on real-time adaptive radiation therapy using images acquired with the MR-Linac.
Frank Ceballos, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Working on developing a system that will automatically evaluate the quality of a radiotherapy plan using by using the three-dimensional dose information
Ivy Krystal Jones, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Creating customized high-quality training data for deep learning based auto-segmentation of OARs using CT and MR
JonWong Kim, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Working on generating a real-time deformable motion model with surrogate signal driven by external markers for lung SBRT dose verification
Ying Liang
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research focused on automatic GTV segmentation in multi-modal images using deep neural networks
Edwin Quashie, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research focused on developing a practical method for treatment planning of re-irradiation based on organ-specific biologically effective dose (BED), involving dose accumulation based on deformable image registration (DIR) and calculations of IsoBED curves for different organs at risk (OAR).