From the President-Elect

The 2008 HPS Midyear Meeting and PDS: Before I address the issues that all HPS Accelerator Section President-Elects must in accordance with the Section’s SOPs, I would like to say a few words about the 41^st Midyear Meeting (Proceedings, 27-30 January 2008, Oakland Marriott City Center) and Professional Development School (PDS) in Oakland, California. That set of meetings was the culmination of a more than 5-year effort by members of the Accelerator Section, Northern California Chapter of the HPS (NCCHPS), and interested parties on the National HPS Program, Continuing Education and other Committees that helped bring us to these successful events. At the 48^th Annual Meeting, 2003, at the Town and Country Hotel in San Diego, California, Carter Ficklen, Lorraine Day, and myself set up a briefing founded on Lorraine’s initial presentation effort to make the formal pitch (carried by Carter) to the key HPS persons in attendance at that meeting. Kathleen Dinnel-Jones, both a member of the NCCHPS and a National HPS Committee, provided crucial advice for contacting the Chair of the Program Committee for the midyear proposal, the Chair of the Continuing Education Committee for the PDS (then still called the Summer School), and the status of venues selection for the known upcoming meetings. This combination of persons, especially Kathleen, Lorraine and Carter, helped continue to carry the ball until the HPS decision to go forward with the meetings was obtained. As a Past-President of the NCCHPS, I was very proud of the great effort the members of the Local Arrangements Committee provided for the meeting and the PDS in 2008. Many more persons, such as Linnea Wahl our current Section President and L. Scott Walker, participated in that effort. I was equally proud as a Past-Director of the Accelerator Section that members, especially the Deans Don Coassairt and Vaclav Vylet, delivered on the PDS in such a manner as to have the formal text of the presentations available before the last speakers had given their talks – and those were very good talks indeed! My great regret was in not being able to participate at these meetings due to my first major health problem, but I received copies of the documents from colleagues and was there in spirit with them!

The 2010 HPS Annual Meeting: The 55th Annual Meeting of the HPS will take place June 27 through July 1, 2010 in Salt Lake City, Utah. I felt that the 54^th Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota had one of the best Accelerator Section programs in recent memory. Linnea in her From the President’s item in this issue of the newsletter provides recognition of the student awards presented at the meeting. I will be contacting the 2010 HPS Program Committee regarding a special section on accelerator health physics in the near future. I am very hopeful that this year the members of the Section will, as they did last year, provide enough material to hold two sessions. In fact, since the dates of the meeting are earlier, I anticipate less interference from competing international meetings in 2010. Assuming the usual abstract due date of February 1, 2010, it is not too early now to be preparing abstracts for your papers and encouraging your students to prepare their abstracts as well. Finally, it is definitely not too early for me to be receiving your nominations for the 2010 G. William Morgan Lecturer. Since the Morgan award is for internationally known authorities on topics pertinent to the HPS, and especially to the members of the Accelerator Section, you should consider this an opportunity to recognize colleagues who have made special contributions over their careers to the field of accelerator radiation protection. I am taking nominations now so please do not delay in sending them to me. The following should be provided for each nominee: a short biographical resume of her/his career, reasons for the nominations, how the nomination will enhance the meeting’s program, and any bibliographical information that will help support the nominee’s past efforts.

The 2009 CCRSO Meeting: The 2009 California Campus Radiation Safety Officer’s Conference was held September 21-22, 2009 on the campus of Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. My NCCHPS colleague Lance Phillips, RSO, Stanford University, was the organizer and master of ceremonies for the event. Papers of note for the Accelerator Section included:

“Cyclotron Operations and Radiation Exposures, Lessons Learned,” David Dick, Ph.D., Head of Cyclotron Physics, Molecular Imaging at Stanford, Palo Alto, California
“Radiation Safety Aspects of LCLS at SLAC,” Sayed Rokni, Ph.D., Head Radiation Protection Department, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California
“US DOE Accelerator Readiness Review Process: An Overview of the SPEAR3 ARR at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center,” Michael Grissom, MPG—HP, Inc., Riverside, California; Sayed Rokni, SLAC; and, Ian Evans, Spallation Neutron Source, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

I encourage all of you to participate in such regional meetings, for example another is the Penn State Roundtable, and to help spread the message of radiation protection for accelerator and other radiation producing machinery. Indeed, those of you who have are encouraged to send an article about the meeting to our newsletter editor.

A Future AAPM/HPS Meeting?: In the October 2009 issue of Health Physics News, which many of you will have received by the time this newsletter is posted, I have provided an article entitled: “Member's Point of View - Facts and Thoughts from the 2009 HPS and AAPM Annual Meetings.” In this article, I comment on the possibility of hosting a joint AAPM/HPS Professional Development School. Such a PDS could be on the topic of accelerators and other radiation generating machinery. One concept that I have discussed with colleagues included the possibility of such a joint PDS at the time of the next medical health physics midyear meeting. Since the last such midyear was in 2006, it would be unlikely that another medical health physics meeting would occur before 2011. When I contact the HPS Program Committee about time at the 2010 Annual Meeting, I will also query them as to when (if scheduled) the next medical health physics topical meeting is planned. I know that our HPS President, Howard Dickson, is very interested in outreach programs with other societies including the HPS and would expect him to be supportive in such an effort. I am very interested in what the Section membership feels about this so please send me your thoughts.