A prestigious Fulbright Post-Graduate Scholarship worth up to $40,000 was accepted today by Australian scientist Andrew Wroe -- an up and coming medical radiation physicist currently working on his PhD via a unique, project focussed on mapping radiation’s effect on DNA in the body during space travel and cancer treatment.
The project is a collaborative effort between the University of Wollongong’s Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP) and ANSTO* where Andrew has a scholarship through The Australian Institute for Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) to use ANSTO’s special equipment for some of his experiments. The other equipment he needs to conduct his research is based at the Loma Linda University Medical Centre in California.
Aged 22, Wroe said the Fulbright Scholarship will fund a total of 12 months over two years at the Loma Linda Medical Centre with US collaborator Reinhard Schulte, MD, where he can spend more time on research using their proton therapy accelerator facility.
“As Australia does not yet have proton therapy we do not have the proton radiation fields needed to conduct some of the necessary measurements we need to understand the effects of radiation at the micro and nano levels,” he said.
“My research measures the radiation interaction with DNA at a measurement of two nanometres or two millionths of a millimetre,” he said. “I am then transferring the data I collect into a computer program I am developing to measure the effects which in turn will help us to improve radiation therapies, such as ground breaking proton therapy, as well as how humans can stay in space for extended periods.”
Wroe has spent much of his research time to-date modelling proton therapy beam lines on the ANSTO Linux Farm equipment using something called the GEANT 4 Monte Carlo based particle transport code. His trip to the Loma Linda Proton Therapy Facility will verify the simulations he has set up on actual therapy beams.
The project is the brain child of the University of Wollongong’s Professor Anatoly Rosenfeld, who is a Director of CMRP, the project’s scientific leader and Wroe’s scientific supervisor and mentor, and ANSTO provides expertise in radiation detection and measurement.
“Andrew is conducting ground breaking research that could change the face of space travel and cancer treatment,” said Professor Rosenfeld.
“Andrew is a third generation of PhD students working on innovative micro and nano-dosimetry at CMRP which means that Australia has expert medical radiation physicists ready to operate a proton therapy facility,” he said.
Andrew is one of nineteen Fulbright scholarships offered to Australians this year.