2018 Advisory Committee Meeting
Thursday and Friday, April 26-27
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The annual meeting of the USTUR’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) moved from fall to spring to better align with the USTUR’s fiscal year. Thus, the 2018 SAC meeting was held April 26-27 at the Hampton Inn, Richland, WA.
Meeting Summary
Day 1 (Thursday):
The morning session focused on operational aspects of the Registries. Topics included administrative and financial developments, progress toward addressing recommendations from the 2017 SAC meeting, Registrant statistics, IRB changes, an overview of the USTUR’s in-house health physics and radiochemistry databases, inventory of National Human Radiobiology Tissue Repository (NHRTR) samples, and the radiochemical analysis of tissues. Additionally, the SAC’s newest member, Luiz Bertelli, introduced himself with a presentation about the research and operations of the internal dosimetry group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The afternoon session provided an engaging series of presentations on USTUR research and opportunities to collaborate. USTUR/College of Pharmacy student, Sara Dumit, presented the final findings of her PhD work to develop a new plutonium decorporation model, and three invited guests discussed their research. Anthony Riddell of Public Health England (PHE) summarized internal dosimetry software that he had helped to develop. This included the Integrated Modules for Bioassay Assessment (IMBA) software suite, which the USTUR has used extensively, and the new Taurus dose assessment software that is presently being developed at PHE. John Brockman of the University of Missouri Research Reactor discussed trace element measurements, which were made by his group using ICP-MS, and possible links between exposure to trace elements and human health. He also discussed the application of actinide analyses to nuclear forensics. Donald Wall, director of the WSU Nuclear Science Center, provided an overview of the broad range of research and operations carried out at the Nuclear Science Center, which is located on the Pullman campus.
Day 2 (Friday):
The second day opened with a presentation by Sergei Tolmachev, which outlined the USTUR’s research plan for FY2019. Following this presentation, the meeting was open only to SAC members and the USTUR staff. SAC members conducted a closed-door executive session, where they compiled a list of comments on the past year and recommendations for the coming year. These were shared with USTUR staff during the SAC debriefing. Additionally, the USTUR director conducted a tour of the USTUR’s laboratory facility.
SAC Membership
Luiz Bertelli joined the SAC as a health physics representative. He filled a vacancy left by Richard Toohey last September.