The USTUR is excited to welcome two new faces to the USTUR team, Maia Avtandilashvili and Elizabeth Thomas. Dr. Avtandilashvili (left) is a health physicist who joined the USTUR on January 22. Ms. Thomas (right) is a laboratory technician who began working with the USTUR on March 1, 2012.
USTUR faculty members were authors on five abstracts that were presented at the 56th Annual Health Physics Society Meeting in West Palm Beach, FL, June 26 – 30, 2011:
USTUR’s Stacey McCord gave an oral presentation titled “Distribution of Terminal Lung and Liver Dose Rates in United States Transuranium and Uranium Registries Registrants.”
Dr. Gary Kramer of Health Canada, Ottawa, gave an oral presentation titled, “Comparison of two leg phantoms containing Am-241 in bone.”
Three Idaho State University students – George Tabatadze, Maia Avtandilashvili, and Majid Khalaf – gave poster presentations on their PhD research. USTUR’s Dr. Anthony James is on each of these students’ doctoral committees and he is an author on their poster presentations.
Dr. Bastian Breustedt started a six-month sabbatical with the USTUR on February 21, 2011. Dr. Breustedt works for the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany, and will be modeling the effects of chelating agents in two USTUR Registrant tissue donors.
The USTUR made the Tri-City Herald’s front page on Sunday, October 24 in an article titled, “Radiation Research: U.S. Transuranium, Uranium Registries in Richland provides clues to how radiation affects human body.”
Dr. Sergei Tolmachev was promoted from laboratory manager to USTUR director on October 1, 2010, following the retirement of 2005-10 director, Dr. Anthony James.
Dr. James will be retained as a part-time consultant. He will be available through ACJ & Associates to contribute his practical and theoretical internal dosimetry experience to the USTUR Research Center’s externally-funded, extramural research projects.
Twenty-one delegates (science fiction writers) from the annual RadCon Convention held in Pasco toured the USTUR laboratory to learn about our research program (and ask lots of questions)! The laboratory tour (an annual event) was arranged by PNNL. USTUR was selected as this year’s representative of “Hanford Science.”
The USTUR Director was the Landauer Memorial Lecturer at the 54th Annual Health Physics Society Meeting, 12-16 July 2009, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Stacey McCord gave a podium presentation on the new USTUR Pathology database and Sergei Tolmachev presented a poster titled, “Elemental Bio-imaging of Actinides and Beryllium in Lymph Nodes of Former Nuclear Workers.”
Idaho State University students, George Tabatadze, Nino Chelidze, Dan Mecham, and Maia Avtandilashvili also presented their research at the meeting.
USTUR director, Tony James, has been formally appointed as an Associate Member of the European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS). His specific association is with Working Group 7 (WG 7) on “Internal Dosimetry.”
This appointment followed from April’s Special Meeting of EURADOS WG 7, Karlsruhe, Germany. The meeting was organized to discuss EURADOS and USTUR’s mutual interests in scientific collaboration on the analysis and interpretation of USTUR case studies.
In January, the 2008 Newsletter (Issue No. 15) was mailed to current (living) USTUR Registrants and the next-of-kin of deceased donors who wish to continue receiving news of USTUR’s progress.
The USTUR has added a ‘Conference Contributions’ link to its homepage. This static link provides easy access to recent USTUR conference contributions and is located between the ‘Graduate Projects’ and ‘Publications’ links below the flashing image.