11/06/2024
By Amanda Vozzo
Speaker: Dr. Jan Schuemann, Associate Professor, Associate Director of Physics Research, Department of Radiation Oncology,
Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School
Title: “Multi-scale modeling of Radiation Therapy - Bridging the gap between physics and biology”
Abstract: Modeling approaches offer a strong tool to understand mechanisms of complex processes, allowing us to probe correlations that are not accessible with experimental techniques. My lab uses the Monte Carlo method to investigate the effects of radiation on tissue at multiple scales. We try to understand how initial physics processes at the DNA scale can result in cell damage and repair. We then try to apply our models to investigate the outcome of different therapies to find the best treatment design for, for example, external beam therapy, FLASH therapy or radiopharmaceutical therapy. In this presentation, I will focus on how we apply the Monte Carlo method to investigate outcomes from the patient to the cell scale.
Bio: Dr. Jan Schuemann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He started his research career in particle physics, receiving his Diploma (masters) degree in Hamburg, Germany, and then moved to Taiwan to look for CP-violation in b-decays for his PhD studies in Taipei. He went on to study b-decays, and later, neutrino physics in Japan. In 2010, Dr. Schuemann started working in the field of Medical Physics when he joined the team of Dr. Harald Paganetti at the MGH to help develop the TOPAS (Tool for Particle Simulation) Monte Carlo system. He became increasingly interested in the mechanisms of radiation action at the cellular scale and thus formed the TOPAS-nBio project, a nanometer scale extension to TOPAS, that simulates the physical and chemical damage induction and following repair kinetics. Since then, Dr. Schuemann’s research aims at improving our understanding of the fundamental processes at the sub-cellular scale. Dr. Schuemann’s lab combines modeling and experimental approaches to investigate the fundamental processes of radiation response. The lab includes projects from Monte Carlo based modeling to investigating the potential of in vivo healthy tissue sparing effects for proton FLASH irradiations.