2024 Advisory Committee Meeting
Thursday and Friday, April 25-26
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The 2024 annual meeting of the USTUR’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) was held April 25-26 in Richland, WA. This two-day meeting featured both operational and scientific presentations. It 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 and updates. The USTUR director, Sergei Tolmachev, welcomed meeting attendees, and the committee chair, Thomas Rucker, provided opening remarks. This was followed by an update on the Department of Energy (DOE) given by the USTUR program manager, Joey Zhou. WSU Tri-Cities vice chancellor, Kathleen McAteer, provided updates regarding the WSU Tri-Cities campus, and WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPPS) associate dean for undergraduate programs, Kathryn Meier, summarized research at the CPPS. Following updates, the USTUR’s faculty and staff gave several presentations on the operational aspects of the Registries, including: administrative and financial developments, progress toward addressing recommendations from the 2023 SAC meeting, registrant statistics, laboratory information management system (LIMS) options, and radiochemistry operations.
This year’s meeting included four scientific presentations on a variety of topics related to USTUR research. John Klumpp of Los Alamos National Laboratory discussed the unique behavior of 238Pu and efforts to model its biokinetics. Michael Bellamy provided an overview of the Million Person Study, including several slides that highlighted ways that the USTUR has contributed to this project. Martin Šefl described uncertainties in estimated post-mortem organ activities that were calculated from urinary excretion of plutonium using Bayesian methodologies. The final scientific presentation was given by Xirui Liu, who described progress that she had made toward assessing the impact that death certificate misclassification errors on estimates risk in epidemiological studies.
To close the first day of the meeting, Dr. Tolmachev presented the USTUR’s research and operational plan for the coming year, and opened the meeting up for general discussion about the day’s presentations. This included a Q&A session where SAC members and other attendees were invited to ask questions about the USTUR’s operations and research.
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 brief discussion about SAC membership, and a session where the SAC and USTUR staff discussed 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
Luiz Bertelli’s second term expired, and his participation on the advisory committee was renewed for a final three-year term. Additionally, Katherine Ertell resigned from the committee. She was replaced by Elizabeth Ellis, who attended the meeting as an incoming member.