McGill Medical Physics

12/03/2025

The MPU is super proud to share that several of our members were honoured last week during the annual Distinguished Lecture & Merit Awards Ceremony of the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at McGill.

Two of our trainees, Daniel Currie in the EngerLab and Douaa El Abiad in the Kildea Lab were awarded Kouk fellowships from the Réseau de cancérologie Rossy / Rossy Cancer Network. Congratulations Daniel and Douaa!

Our wonderful director Prof. Shirin Enger was presented with the Teaching and Mentorship award following a touching introduction by her nominator Prof. Eduardo Franco. To quote Prof. Franco:

“Her mentorship style is deeply personal, learning each trainee’s aspirations and challenges, and offering unwavering support through academic and individual support. Her influence extends to early-career faculty, whom she helps launch research programs and navigate academic progression. Her own journey—from war-torn Iran to scientific leadership—infuses her mentorship with empathy and resilience.”

Congratulations Shirin for this worthy recognition of your contributions to the MPU and wider Medical Physics communities. You inspire us!

Photo credit: Owen Egan and Joni Dufour

02/12/2025

An innovation by McGill Medical Physics alumnus Dr. Simon Vallières, now a Research Associate at INRS, along with our faculty, medical physicists Dr. Tanner Connell and Michael Evans as well as other collaborators has been recognized among Québec Science’s Top 10 Discoveries in Quebec for 2024.

I need your support to promote this important research and celebrate the contributions of our alumni and faculty. Please take a moment to vote. The deadline is February 14.

Notre jury a sélectionné les 10 découvertes québécoises les plus impressionnantes de la dernière année. À votre tour de choisir la découverte qui vous surprend ou vous inspire le plus.

02/12/2025

An innovation by McGill Medical Physics alumnus Dr. Simon Vallières, now a Research Associate at INRS, along with our faculty, medical physicists Dr. Tanner Connell and Michael Evans as well as other collaborators has been recognized among Québec Science’s Top 10 Discoveries in Quebec for 2024.

We need your support to promote this important research and celebrate the contributions of our alumni and faculty. Please take a moment to vote. The deadline is February 14.

Notre jury a sélectionné les 10 découvertes québécoises les plus impressionnantes de la dernière année. À votre tour de choisir la découverte qui vous surprend ou vous inspire le plus.

02/12/2025

An innovation by McGill Medical Physics alumnus Dr. Simon Vallières, now a Research Associate at INRS, along with our faculty, medical physicists Dr. Tanner Connell and Michael Evans as well as other collaborators is recognized among Québec Science’s Top 10 Discoveries in Quebec for 2024.

We need your support to promote this important research and celebrate the contributions of our alumni and faculty. Please take a moment to vote. The deadline is February 14.

Notre jury a sélectionné les 10 découvertes québécoises les plus impressionnantes de la dernière année. À votre tour de choisir la découverte qui vous surprend ou vous inspire le plus.

02/12/2025

An innovation by McGill Medical Physics alumnus Dr. Simon Vallières, now a Research Associate at INRS, along with our faculty, medical physicists Dr. Tanner Connell and Michael Evans as well as other collaborators has been recognized among Québec Science’s Top 10 Discoveries in Quebec for 2024.

We need your support to promote this important research and celebrate the contributions of our alumni and faculty.
Please take a moment to vote. The deadline is February 14.

Notre jury a sélectionné les 10 découvertes québécoises les plus impressionnantes de la dernière année. À votre tour de choisir la découverte qui vous surprend ou vous inspire le plus.

11/19/2024

Congratulations Maryam Rahbaran, PhD student at the EngerLab McGill Medical Physics on publishing "RapidBrachyIVBT: A dosimetry software for patient-specific intravascular brachytherapy dose calculations on optical coherence tomography images" in Medical Physics. Maryam has developed a Monte Carlo-based dose calculation software, accounting for patient-specific geometry from Optical Coherence Tomography images for intravascular brachytherapy treatments and added this software to our treatment planning system, RapidBrachyMCTPS. This work was a collaboration between McGill University - Medical Physics and radiation oncologists and cardiologists at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, USA. We thank our collaborators, specially Dr. James Man Git Tsui, Maryam's co-supervisor, and funding from Canada Research Chair Program, Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada and resources from the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.
McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

Background Coronary artery disease is the most common form of cardiovascular disease. It is caused by excess plaque along the arterial wall, blocking blood flow to the heart (stenosis). A percutaneo...

10/28/2024

Congratulations Azin Esmaelbeigi PhD candidate at the EngerLab, McGill Medical Physics, and all the co-authors on publishing "E-Brachy: New dosimetry package for electronic brachytherapy sources" in Medical Physics. In this study, a dosimetry software tool called E-Brachy is developed to characterize the Xoft electronic brachytherapy source. The authors thank Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Jewish General Hospital Foundation and Institut TransMedTech for funding this study.

Background Large reported variability in the material composition and geometrical components of the Xoft electronic high-dose-rate brachytherapy Causes inter-source discrepancy in the source output....

10/25/2024

This week’s Friday Noon Seminar will be given by Natividad Gomez-Roman, PhD on the topic of "Identifying novel radiosensitizers for the treatment of glioblastomas". Join us via the YouTube livestream, October 25 at 12:00 EST. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6jHnK9KQwvARfDn_IinAzQ

10/09/2024

Congratulations McGill Medical Physics PhD candidate Julien Bancheri and co-authors from Jan Seuntjens lab for publishing their paper "Evaluation of DSRD-based pulsers for a Dielectric Wall Accelerator" in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. Well done Julien, MPU is very proud of you 👏!

09/25/2024

Today we are celebrating five of McGill Medical Physics women graduate and Postdoctoral students for their amazing achievements. First we congratulate Hailey Ahn former MSc student at the EngerLab for developing small, cost‐efficient scintillating fiber detectors for automated synthesis of positron emission tomography radiopharmaceuticals, during her MSc studies, published now in Medical Physics (https://aapm.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/8JNEWWVJTVCDDC78ZPJV?target=10.1002/mp.17369). Second we congratulate Joanna Li, research assistant at the Engerlab for investigating the relative biological effectiveness of clinically relevant photon energies for the survival of human colorectal, cervical, and prostate cancer cell lines published in Physics in Medicine and Biology (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6560/ad7d5a). Third, congratulations Maude Robitaille, PhD student at the EngerLab on her publication Ytterbium-169 based high dose rate intensity modulated brachytherapy for focal treatment of prostate cancer, published in Brachytherapy (https://www.brachyjournal.com/article/S1538-4721(24)00076-X/fulltext). Fourth, we congratulate Dr. Mirta Dunmancic postdoctoral fellow at the Engerlab for being awarded the the Accelerated Computing for Women award through the DRI EDIA Champions program from Digital Research Alliance of Canada | Alliance de recherche numérique du Canada and fifth Dr. Laya Rafiee, postdoctoral fellow at the EngerLab on running the workshop she organized on "Women in Machine Learning" at the Forty-first International Conference on Machine Learning held in Vienna, Austria. We are very proud of you and your achievements 👏!

09/25/2024

The 2024-2025 Friday Noon Seminars start off this week! Join us, Sept 27 at 12:00EST where we’ll be joined by Pawel Mekarski who will speak about “Data-driven updates to Canada’s National Radon Program to more effectively address rising radon exposure".

This channel hosts public talks held at the Medical Physics Unit (MPU) of McGill University. The MPU is an academic unit within McGill University's Faculty of Medicine and a division within the Department of Oncology. The activities of the MPU encompass Medical Physics education, research and clinic...

08/09/2024

Congratulations William Parker, Faculty at McGill Medical Physics unit and clinical medical physics chief at McGill University Health Center, on being elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (FAAPM). This prestigious honor recognizes members who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, made significant contributions through research and scholarly work, and excelled in teaching and mentoring.