2021 Advisory Committee Meeting
Thursday and Friday, April 8-9
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AgendaThe 2021 annual meeting of the USTUR’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) was held via the video conference on April 8-9. The meeting was divided into two half-day sessions. It focused on the operational aspects of the Registries and featured three technical presentations.
Meeting Summary
Day 1 (Thursday):
The meeting opened with introductions by the USTUR director, Sergei Tolmachev, and opening remarks by the committee chair, Thomas Rucker. This was followed by an update on the Department of Energy (DOE)/AU-13 by DOE program manager, Joey Zhou. WSU Tri-Cities chancellor, Sandra Haynes, provided an update on the Tri-Cities campus, and WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPPS) dean, Mark Leid, summarized research at CPPS. The USTUR’s faculty and staff gave several presentations on the operational aspects of the Registries, including: financial developments, progress toward addressing recommendations from the 2020 SAC meeting, revision of a draft data quality objectives document, database harmonization, institutional review board (IRB) changes, and our research and operational plan for FY2022. In addition, several technical presentations were given. Tulane University graduate student, Xirui Liu, discussed her work to quantify over- and under- classification of diseases on death certificates. Martin Šefl, a postdoctoral researcher at the USTUR, has been studying a group of Manhattan Project workers known as the UPPU “you-pee-Pu” follow-up group, and presented his findings about biases in predicted post-mortem organ activities. Also, Joey Zhou presented his continuing effort to better understand the relationship between the actinide concentration in a single bone and the concentration in an entire skeleton.
Day 2 (Friday):
The second day was administrative in nature and was open only to SAC members, the USTUR staff, and the DOE program manager. The day began with a Q&A session, where the SAC and USTUR staff discussed their observations about topics presented during Day 1. This was followed by a “closed-door” executive session, where only SAC members remained in the meeting. After lunch the USTUR staff and the DOE program manager rejoined the meeting, and the SAC shared several comments regarding progress during the past year as well as recommendations for the coming year.
SAC Membership
Luiz Bertelli completed his first term as a health physics representative, and was renewed for another three-year term.