2022 Advisory Committee Meeting
Thursday and Friday, April 28-29
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AgendaThe 2022 annual meeting of the USTUR’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) was held via the video conference on April 28-29. The meeting was divided into two sessions. The first focused on the operational aspects of the Registries and featured three technical presentations. The second provided time for SAC members to discuss the USTUR’s activities during the past year, and to make recommendations for the coming year.
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)/EHSS-10 by Kevin Dressman, Director of the Office of Health and Safety. 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 2021 SAC meeting, radiochemistry operations, database harmonization, institutional review board changes, and the USTUR’s research and operational plan for FY2023.
In addition to routine operations, USTUR staff have contributed to NCRP reports, conducted internal research, maintained a broad network of collaborative research efforts, published 10 journal articles, and given numerous presentations at scientific conferences and seminars. Three technical presentations described some of the research that the USTUR has been involved in during the past year. Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, Deepesh Poudel, discussed a proposed respiratory tract model that includes compartments to describe physical binding in scar tissue. Martin Šefl, a postdoctoral researcher at the USTUR, explained the latent bone modeling method for estimating the concentration of actinides in the skeleton from the concentration in individual bones. Also, Maia Avtandilashvili presented her study of enriched uranium in a female whole-body donor.
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 an 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
Thomas Rucker completed his second term as a health physics representative, and was renewed for another three-year term.