Torbjörn Andersson, MD PhD

Dr Andersson graduated in Medicine in 1973 at the University of Uppsala and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences, PhD, University of Uppsala in 1988. In his previous position as Chairman of the Department of Radiology and Head, Division of Radiology, Hospital Physics and Radiophysics at Örebro Medical Centre Hospital, Dr Andersson was responsible for two major projects:

1. The design of a new Radiology Department, which is divided into seven organ-specific radiology sections, each responsible for a specific medical area and its associated clinics, and
2. The establishment of a fully digital department, completely filmless using softcopy reporting, digital archiving, communication, and remote conferencing.

Dr Andersson has published 50 scientific papers and has been guest lecturer at numerous conferences including three in Adelaide, Australia: two annual meetings of ASUM, and a symposium in 1999 entitled "State of the Art Imaging – Digital Radiography, Teleradiology and PACS in the 21st century". He is medical advisor to several major manufacturers of radiological equipment.

Alun Beddoe

Dr Beddoe’s career started in 1967 at Christchurch Hospital, New Zealand. Since that time he has gone to and fro around the globe studying at various institutions and working at Leeds University, Auckland Hospital, Auckland University, Dunedin Hospital, Royal Adelaide Hospital and currently Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK. In 1999, he was awarded a DSc from the University of Leeds with a dissertation entitled "Bone morphology and bone densitometry, in vivo neutron activation analysis and body composition and other topics".

Although most of his research has been in the fields of bone morphology/dosimetry and IVNAA/body composition, he has dabbled in many areas, but largely in applied radiation physics. His present research interests include solid state detector responses, oncogenicity of low LET radiation, indexing chemotherapy, effects of treatment delays on clinical outcome and BNCT. He is currently the Honorary Editor of Physics in Medicine and Biology, Chairman of the IPEM Fellowship and Membership Panel and holds the Honorary Chair of Radiological Physics at the University of Birmingham. Nevertheless his specialist responsibility is Head of Radiotherapy Physics at one of the larger UK centres and he will shortly be Head of Medical Physics at the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust.

Dr Black is an Occupational Physician specializing in Information Technology Medicine. He is currently working at the University of Auckland Faculty of Health Sciences, and in his own practice in Auckland. Dr Black originally trained in radio engineering, and worked in that industry for ten years before entering Medical School in 1977. He began an academic interest in Radiofrequency Safety while an academic at the University of Otago Medical School in 1986. Since that time he has qualified as a Specialist in Occupational Medicine and was Chief Medical Officer of Air New Zealand until 1997. His practice is now divided between clinical and academic Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and consulting in Radiofrequency Safety. He is a member of the International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety and the Committee on Man and Radiation of the IEEE, as well as a consulting member of the International Commission on non-ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). 

Walter Huda

Dr Huda studied Physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and gained his PhD in Medical Physics at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (Hammersmith Hospital) at the University of London. From 1976 to 1981 he worked as a physicist at Amersham International, a commercial company specializing in radioactive products. In 1982, Dr Huda moved to the Manitoba Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in Winnipeg, Canada where he worked as a medical physicist in the fields of diagnostic imaging and medical radiation dosimetry. In 1990 he joined the University of Florida to become Director of Radiological Physics, and in 1997 he was appointed Professor of Radiology at the SUNY Upstate Medical University at Syracuse. His research interests are in medical imaging and radiation dosimetry. He has published one book, approximately 180 scientific papers, and is board certified by the Canadian College of Physicists in Medicine and by the American Board of Medical Physics.

Dr Hunter has a principal research interest in biomedical engineering, including in particular the development of mathematical models of the heart, lungs and musculo-skeletal system, and the mechanical, electrical and biochemical functions of the heart. He founded the Bioengineering Group in the Department of Engineering Science which now includes four academic staff and eight full-time research assistants. This has become one of the primary international research centres for the Physiome Project, which aims to build large-scale computational models to understand integrative organ function. Dr Hunter was recently appointed a Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland. He is chair of the Physiome Commission of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, is currently a James Cook Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and was recently appointed a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Dr Moulder graduated from Carleton College in 1967, and received his PhD in Biology from Yale University in 1972. His primary research interest is the biological basis for carcinogenesis and cancer therapy. He has published extensively in this area; his research has been supported by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Cancer Society. Dr Moulder has served on the NIH Experimental Therapeutics and Radiation Review Groups and has been a member of many of the NIH panels that have reviewed grant proposals on non-ionizing radiation biology.

He has lectured extensively on ionizing and non-ionizing radiation biology and human health, and served as a consultant and expert witness in several cases of alleged health effects of exposure to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Dr Moulder is a member of the US National Council on Radiation Protection, the Radiation Research Society, the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, the Environmental Mutagen Society, the Bioelectromagnetics Society, and the IEEE. He is a Senior Editor of Radiation Research and an Associate Editor of Experimental Biology and Medicine. He has served on a number of local government advisory groups concerned with environmental health, pesticides, and non-ionizing radiation.

Dr Murray received his PhD in Medical Physics and Computer Science from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, where he studied the application of parallel processing to radiotherapy dose computation. Between 1992 and 1997, he worked with General Electric Medical Systems where he was Lead System Designer for GE's CT simulation product line in France. In 1998 Dr Murray founded Vital Edge Limited, a New Zealand-based consulting company specializing in medical software, before joining TomoTherapy in 2000.

Dr Murray also chairs Working Group 7 of the DICOM standard. DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is a data interchange standard for medical equipment. It is administered by the National Electrical Manufacturers’ Association, an international standards committee based at Washington DC. Working Group 7 administers the part of the standard related to radiotherapy equipment.

Agnette Peralta was awarded a BSc in Physics from the University of the Philippines and a MSc in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. Since 1991 she has been the Director of the Radiation Health Service, renamed Bureau of Health Devices and Technology (BHDT) in 2000, in the Philippines. The BHDT is in charge of regulating not only radiation emitting electrical devices and radiation facilities but also medical/health devices. Ms Peralta has worked in the fields of radiation protection (ionizing and non-ionizing) and medical physics since 1975. She is also a part-time Associate Professor in the MSc Medical Physics Programme of the University of Santo Tomas Graduate School. 

Dr Akay received his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University in Istanbul and PhD from Rutgers University. He has played a key role in introducing emerging technologies, including neural engineering and biocomplexity, to the biomedical engineering community and promoting biomedical education in the world. He is the author of several books in his field and has given over 30 keynote and plenary talks and several invited talks at international meetings, symposiums, and workshops, and has edited 14 special issues for biomedical engineering journals/magazines. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Biomedical Engineering Book Series published by Wiley/IEEE Press. He is also the founding and current Editor-Chief of the first online Biomedical Engineering and Science Encyclopedia published by Wiley. He was the Program Chair of the Annual IEEE-EMBS Conference in 2001 and is Chair of the forthcoming 1st International IEEE-EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering in 2003.

Dr Akay is the recipient of the IEEE-EMBS Career Service Award in 2001, a recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal 2000 and the IEEE-EMBS Early Career Achievement Award in 1997. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves on the advisory board of several international journals including the IEEE T-BME, IEEE ITIB, and Smart Engineering Systems and organizations and NIH Bioengineering partnership study sessions and several NSF review panels. His Neural Engineering and Informatics Lab is investigating the respiratory somatosensory responses of patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and the effect of developmental abnormalities and maturation on the dynamics of respiration.

Sponsored by EMBS

After graduating in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Dr Thakor moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he gained a MS in biomedical engineering and a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include neural signal processing, and the design of biomedical instrumentation. He has collaborated extensively with many investigators in the Medical School, and has published more than 80 papers in scientific journals. Dr Thakor is a Fellow of the AIMBE and the IEEE.

Jake Van Dyk

Dr Van Dyk is Manager of the Clinical Physics group at the London Regional Cancer Centre, Ontario, Canada. He has 30 years experience in radiation oncology medical physics. His research includes two major areas: the implementation of procedures and technologies into clinical practice, and the assessment of normal tissue response to radiation treatment both in the laboratory and clinic.

Dr Van Dyk was involved in the early (1970s) implementation of CT scanning for radiation therapy planning. This project evolved into research which gen-erated human dose-response data for lung and has further progressed into assessing dose, time, fractionation, and volume effects in both animals and humans. He has been involved in various national and international task groups developing recommendations for radiation treatment related activities. He serves as reviewer for various journals and granting agencies, and is the author of numerous publications (over 120) including multiple book chapters. In 1999, he published a major textbook on The Modern Technology of Radiation Oncology. Dr Van Dyk was elected Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine for his "contributions to the field of medical physics". He has served as the President of the Canadian College of Physicists in Medicine and has also participated on the boards and task groups of various professional organizations.