Medical Physics People - UT Austin Portugal Program

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António Paulo

Principal Investigator in Portugal (Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Instituto Superior Técnico) THER-PBCT

António Paulo

Principal Investigator in Portugal (Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Instituto Superior Técnico) THER-PBCT

Name	António Paulo
Role in the UT Austin Portugal	Principal Investigator (2021 ERP)
Affiliation Institution	Instituto Superior Técnico
Position in Affiliation Institution	Principal Researcher

Chun Li

Principal Investigator at UT (Department of Cancer Systems Imaging, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) THER-PBCT

Chun Li

Principal Investigator at UT (Department of Cancer Systems Imaging, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) THER-PBCT

Name	Chun Li
Role in the UT Austin Portugal	Principal Investigator (2021 ERP)
Affiliation Institution	The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Position in Affiliation Institution	Professor

David R. Grosshans

Professor MD Anderson Cancer Center, The University of Texas

David R. Grosshans

Professor MD Anderson Cancer Center, The University of Texas

Role in the Program

Host, Short-term Research Internships 2023

Short Bio

Dr. Grosshans holds a faculty position within the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Experimental Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Clinically, as a radiation oncologist, he treats adult and pediatric patients requiring proton therapy. He is a physician scientist and devotes a significant amount of time to research. His research interests are driven by his clinical experience. He has a special expertise, both research and clinical, in particle therapy, including the use of multi-field optimized Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy (IMPT). His lab’s ongoing bench research includes investigations of biologic effect variability in proton therapy, including differential DNA damage as a function of physical factors, as well as radiation effects on nonreplicative cell types including neurons. Dr. Grosshans has extensive experience in both in vitro and in vivo radiation biologic effect models and has numerous ongoing collaborations with faculty in radiation physics, neuro-immunology as well as neuroscience investigators at Baylor and Texas Children’s Hosiptal. Dr. Grosshans has also extended his work to include the study of particles heavier than protons, including helium and carbon ions and have numerous ongoing collaborations with centers in Europe and Asia.

David R. Grosshans

Principal Investigator at MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas at Austin.

David R. Grosshans

Principal Investigator at MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Name	David R. Grosshans
Role in the UT Austin Portugal Program	Principal Investigator (2022 ERP)
Affiliation Institution	MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas at Austin
Position in Affiliation Institution	Professor

Douglas Befroy

Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center Biomedical Imaging Center, UT Austin

Douglas Befroy

Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center Biomedical Imaging Center, UT Austin

Role in the Program	Host, Short-term Research Internships 2022
Hostee	João Valente Duarte

Short Bio

Dr. Befroy is the Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center. He has more than 20 years of experience developing advanced MR methods to investigate physiology and metabolism in human and animal models. He received his Ph.D. at Oxford University after which he joined the imaging community in the Departments of Diagnostic Radiology and Internal Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. At Yale, Doug served in several leadership roles, including acting as Director of the Core of Muscle and Liver Spectroscopy and Co-Director of the Mouse Imaging Core. Most recently, he founded and ran an independent consultancy firm that provides technical support and innovative research solutions to imaging centers and scientists across the globe.

Emily Porter

Assistant Professor Cockrell School of Engineering, UT Austin

Emily Porter

Assistant Professor Cockrell School of Engineering, UT Austin

Role in the Program	Host, Short-term Research Internships 2022
Hostee	Maria Gonçalves

Short Bio

Emily Porter has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin since 2019. Previously, she was an EU Marie-Curie Fellow in the Translational Medical Device Lab at the National University of Ireland Galway. She received her Ph.D. from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 2015, in Electrical Engineering with a focus on Computational and Applied Electromagnetics. Dr. Porter’s research focuses on the design and application of electromagnetic (EM)-based medical technologies, including for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. She also studies the dielectric properties of biological tissues, which are fundamental to EM medical technologies.

Filipa Mendes

Principal Researcher at C2TN - Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Filipa Mendes

Principal Researcher at C2TN - Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

Name	Filipa Mendes
Role in the UT Austin Portugal Program	Principal Investigator (2022 ERP)
Affiliation Institution	C2TN – Centro de Ciências e Tecnologias Nucleares, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa
Position in Affiliation Institution	Principal Researcher

Gabriel O. Sawakuchi

Board-certified Medical Physicist and Associate Professor The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Gabriel O. Sawakuchi

Board-certified Medical Physicist and Associate Professor The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Role in the Program	Host, Short-term Research Internships 2023
Hostee	Eurico Pereira and Joana Antunes

Short Bio

Dr. Sawakuchi is a board-certified medical physicist and Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Department of Radiation Physics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. As the gastrointestinal-physics (GI-physics) service chief in the Department of Radiation Physics he leads a team of seven PhD level board certified medical physicists that oversees the treatment of over 1,000 patients per year. The GI-physics team oversees all clinical physics aspects of the GI radiotherapy program at MD Anderson.

As a Clinician Scientist, Dr. Sawakuchi has about 70% protected time for his research endeavors. Dr. Sawakuchi’s research is at the interface of radiobiology, DNA repair, and immunology and currently focuses on understanding how radiation-induced DNA damage, and repair can be leveraged to radiosensitize tumors and activate the immune system to combat cancer. The Sawakuchi Lab studies how different forms of clinical radiation including photons, protons, carbon ions and alpha particles modulate oxidative stress, DNA damage, DNA repair and immune activation.

Joana Dias

Principal Investigator in Portugal (INESC Coimbra) AT@PT

Joana Dias

Principal Investigator in Portugal (INESC Coimbra) AT@PT

Role in the UT Austin Portugal Program	Principal Investigator of AT@PT
Afilliation Institution	Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers at Coimbra (INESC Coimbra)
Position in Afilliation Institution	Researcher
Afilliation Institution Website	https://www.uc.pt/en/org/inescc

Biography

Joana Matos Dias has a BSc in Computers Engineering (University of Coimbra, 1996), an MSc in Operations Research (University of Lisbon, 2000), an MSc in Quantitative Finance (University of London, 2011), a Ph.D. and Habilitation in Management Science (University of Coimbra, 2006, 2017). She is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, where she has been responsible for several curricular units like informatics, logistics, operations research, modeling in management, simulation. She is also a researcher at Inesc-Coimbra. Her main research interest is decision making models and algorithms in general, and operations research applied to health problems, combinatorial optimization, multiobjective optimization, in particular. She is the author or co-author of two books and more than 90 papers in refereed international journals, conference proceedings and book chapters.

Personal homepage

Scopus ID: 36238953500

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2517-7905

Joana Matos Dias

Senior Researcher at University of Coimbra, INESC Coimbra, PT

Joana Matos Dias

Senior Researcher at University of Coimbra, INESC Coimbra, PT

Name	Joana Matos Dias
Role in the UT Austin Portugal Program	Principal Investigator (2022 ERP)
Affiliation Institution	University of Coimbra, INESC Coimbra, US
Position in Affiliation Institution	Senior Researcher

Maria Filomena Botelho

Area Director for Medical Physics in Portugal

Maria Filomena Botelho

Area Director for Medical Physics in Portugal

Biography

Full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra (FMUC), Director of the Biophysics Institute of FMUC and Leader of the Research Line Modelling in Cancer at CIMAGO-iCBR, Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research.

Botelho graduated in Medicine in 1981 and completed her PhD in Medicine (Physiological Sciences – Biophysics) in 1992, and her Habilitation in Medicine (Physiological and Technological Sciences – Biophysics) in 2000.

With more than 30 years of experience in research, Botelho’s main interests span biophysics, the development of animal models for human diseases (cancer, cardiac ischemia), nuclear oncology (from molecular biology to molecular imaging), photodynamic therapy in pre-clinical models and radiopharmacy. Botelho participated as a research staff in more than 20 projects and as a PI on 23 projects during her career. Besides research, Botelho has extensive teaching and supervision experience.

Radhe Mohan

Principal Investigator in Texas (MD Anderson Cancer Center) AT@PT

Radhe Mohan

Principal Investigator in Texas (MD Anderson Cancer Center) AT@PT

Role in the UT Austin Portugal Program	Principal Investigator of AT@PT
Afilliation Institution	Department of Radiation Physics, MD Anderson Cancer Center, UT
Position in Afilliation Institution	Professor
Afilliation Institution Website	https://www.mdanderson.org

Biography

Dr. Mohan has extensive experience in the field of radiation oncology physics including numerous pioneering contributions. Recently, his activities have been concentrated on various physical, clinical and biological aspects of proton and light-ion therapy. Dr. Mohan is the Co-Principal Investigator (along with Dr. Thomas Delaney of Massachusetts General Hospital) of a Program Project grant entitled “Improving the Clinical Effectiveness and Understanding of the Biophysical Basis of Proton Therapy” from the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Mohan will be leading the entire project and oversee the research progress in the coordination of the research team in Portugal.

Medical Physics

António Paulo

Chun Li

David R. Grosshans

David R. Grosshans

Douglas Befroy

Emily Porter

Filipa Mendes

Gabriel O. Sawakuchi

Joana Dias

Joana Matos Dias

Maria Filomena Botelho

Radhe Mohan

Office in Portugal

Office in Austin