EEB Assessors

Prof. Dr. Kay-Uwe Kasch (born in 1966) was educated in Dresden, Heidelberg and Vancouver, BC. His interest in Medical Physics started early with getting his first graduation from the German Cancer Reseach Center (DKFZ) Heidelberg in 1992. After doing research in particle therapy at DKFZ and TRIUMF Vancouver, Canada he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1996 at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany. Being a research scholar at the Charité, University Medicine Berlin for more than 6 years he moved to Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia in 2002 to work as a Senior Medical Physics Consultant at the King AbdulAziz University.

Being appointed as a Professor for Medical Radiation Physics at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin he returned to Germany in 2006. There he is currently Dean of the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry. He served and serves a member of various professional organizations. As Board Member and Chair of Communication and Publication of the European Federation of Organizations for Medical Physics (EFOMP) he was actively involved in getting Medical Physics up on the agenda within the European and international frameworks.

At the moment he is the German representative to EFOMP Council and (co-)chairs various organizations on national level. He is teaching various courses within the Bachelor and Master Curricula of the Applied Physics – Medical Engineering study, mainly with a focus on radiation physics, radiation therapy and nuclear medicine.His research interests are radiation therapy, particularly novel approaches in particle therapy and Tomotherapy.

Mikko Hakulinen is a medical physicist and he has over 10 year experience in the field of nuclear medicine, especially PET- imaging. He started his career in radiotherapy unit and he has worked also at the University of Kuopio in the field of QA/QC in drug manufacturing and ultrasound imaging. He started his work at the Department of Nuclear Medicine 2008 and was in charge of hospital cyclotron start-up project during 2011-2016. He received his PhD- degree 2006 and adjunct professor title 2010 in the field of medical imaging. He has over 40 scientific publications and supervise several PhD- thesis projects. Majority of his research projects are related to nuclear medicine and especially PET-imaging. He has a long teaching experience and he lectures both at the University of Eastern Finland and Savonia University of Applied Sciences. He also teaches physicist trainees at the hospital. He was Finnish representative in nuclear medicine committee of Nordic Association of Clinical Physics (NACP) during 2014-2018. He is also member of Finnish Society of Nuclear Medicine (FSNM) and he was a board member and secretary of the society during 2015-2019. Currently he is the advocate of FSNM physics division.

At the moment, he is working at the Diagnostic Imaging Center at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. His main responsibilities are related PET- imaging. He also works as radiation safety officer in the cyclotron and radiopharmacy unit.

Dr. Stan Heukelom (born in 1956) was educated in Amsterdam, with the last 2 years as student in the Ducth Cancer Centre (NKI, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Huis) In 1995 he graduated with a PhD, with topic about in vivo dosimetry. In 1992 he moved as Medical Physicist to the Vrije Universiteit University Medical Center, called from 2018 the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. In 1994 he was registration as Medical Physics Expert after finishing the Dutch training scheme. His main topics: dosimetry, quality assurance, teaching and auditing.

In 2008 he was involved in setting up the Dutch MPE-training scheme according to Dutch law, allocated by law to the foundation Opleiding Klinisch Fysicus. From 2008 until 2018 he was board member of that foundation (secretary).

Related to MPE training he is involved in European setting of that since 2011. Since 2017 he is member of the EBAMP.

Desislava Kostova-Lefterova is a Medical Physicist with PhD in the field of optimisation of paediatric X-ray examinations and post-graduate education in Medical Radiation Physics. She has more than 13 years’ of experience as medical physicist, starting her career at NCRRP in the field of research in QC and dosimetry methods in diagnostic radiology and development of new methodologies. She has experience in lecturing and training on QA/QC in medical imaging, dosimetry and radiation protection to medical staff and the physics of medical imaging to medical physicists as part of the Bulgarian residency program of Medical Radiation Physics. She has participated in national and international projects in the field of medical exposure and radiation protection and part of the organisation of two national surveys on patient doses and elaboration of national diagnostic reference levels.

At present, she is working at two big university hospitals and at two Bulgarian medical universities as MPE and associated professor in the field of patients and personnel dosimetry and radiation protection; QA/QC; optimization of x-ray examinations protocols and practice; personnel training and IORT for breast cancer. She is member of the executive board (2016-2020) of the Bulgarian Society of Biomedical Physics and Engineering (member of EFOMP, IOMP, IFMBE, EAMBES) and member of the Bulgarian national examination board of the residency program on Medical Radiation Physics.

Margaret graduated with a BSc Hons in Experimental Physics from University College Cork in Ireland. She obtained a postgraduate diploma in Medical Physics from Aberdeen, UK and then graduated from the UK clinical training scheme to obtain an IPEM postgraduate Diploma and an MSc (distinction) in Medical Physics from Exeter University. She then worked as a clinical radiotherapy physicist in Bristol Oncology Centre, Bristol, UK, Mater Private Hospital Dublin, Ireland, A.Z. Sint Augustinus, Antwerp, Belgium before taking up her present post as Head of Radiotherapy Physics at University Hospital Galway in Ireland in 2004.

Margaret is a Clinical Associate Director of the National Radiation Oncology Physics Residency Scheme in Ireland which has CAMPEP accredited training scheme for radiotherapy physicists. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer of Physics at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) where she lectures and supervises projects as part of the MSc in Medical Physics (also CAMPEP accredited)..

Margaret is the President of the Irish College of Physicists in Medicine (ICPM), the professional body for recognition of Medical Physics Experts. She is also one of the EFOMP representatives for the Irish Association of Physicists in Medicine (IAPM). Margaret is a member of the HIQA Expert Advisory Group which is engaged with implementation of the EU BSS 2013. She is also a member of the HSE Health and Social Care Professions Advisory Group. Margaret has recently joined the ESTRO-EFOMP Core Curriculum Review Group.

Dr Irene Polycarpou is an Assistant Professor in Medical Physics and the Vice Chair of the Department of Health Sciences at European University Cyprus. She attained MSc and PhD from King's College London and undertook postdoctoral research at St Thomas' Hospital London.

Her research interests include enhancement of the diagnostic value of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and its integration with simultaneous Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). She was involved in the development of simulated 4D PET-MR datasets that can be used freely by academia and industry for any scientific investigation.

She has participated in several EU projects. She is an active member of the board of the Society of Medical Physicists Cyprus and the President of the Cyprus Association of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering.

Bernhard Sattler is head of the medical physics and data analysis section of the Dept. of Nuclear Medicine of the University Hospital Leipzig, Germany, and honorary professor for medical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany. He graduated in electrical and biomedical engineering from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany, in 1994 and became a board certified medical physicist at the University of Leipzig in 2001. He received his PhD in 2000. He is an approved Medical Physics Expert in radiation protection, handling of unsealed radionuclides in medicine and running a cyclotron. Until he became head of the medical physics section in 2010, he worked as a scientific assistant. Moreover, he coordinates and runs radiation protection courses for healthcare professionals since 1997. His research interests are hybrid molecular imaging and in clinical and radiation protection internal dosimetry. In this, his special field of work is the assessment of biodistribution and incorporation dosimetry within preclinical and clinical trials to evaluate new radiopharmaceuticals for PET. For more than a decade, he is involved in the physical and technical support of the implementation of hybrid cross-modality molecular imaging techniques in interdisciplinary clinical routine and research workflows.

He belongs to the early adopters of PET/MRI in research and clinical settings and represents expertise in designing and running clinical trials of mostly but not limited to phase 0/1. He continuously contributes to the identification of key applications of PET/MRI and resolving of remaining technical issues as well as to the preparation of respective procedural and clinical guidelines. He is in the editorial board of the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Physics and the European Journal of Medical Physics and peer reviewer for numerous scientific journals and grand organizations in this field. He himself published and contributed to numerous peer reviewed scientific papers, book chapters and other scientific texts and assays. As an academic teacher and professor of medical engineering he is teaching in several medical and technical curricula giving lectures in over 25 topics and themes. He supervises and assesses student graduation theses and projects (BSc, MSc, PhD) for academic faculties at several national universities regularly and, occasionally, also for european/international universities.

Prof. Seán Cournane is a member of the Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering Department of St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, where he is an approved Medical Physics Expert. He has clinical responsibilities in areas such as nuclear medicine, radionuclide therapy, ultrasound and CT. Prof. Cournane initially graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Theoretical Physics from University College Dublin (UCD) before undertaking his PhD in Radiation Physics in UCD. He subsequently completed an MSc in Physical Sciences in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin while working in an affiliated clinical institution.

Prof. Cournane is the current Director of the Centre for Physics in Health and Medicine (CPHM), a research centre based in the UCD School of Physics. He is the Clinical Director of the CAMPEP-accredited MSc in Medical Physics programme at UCD, is a Clinical Lecturer at the Dept. of Clinical Medicine, Trinity College Dublin and contributes to teaching at the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland.

Prof. Cournane is an active researcher, having published over 70 peer reviewed scientific publications and regularly contributing to local and international scientific conferences. He supervises several PhD and MSc candidates and has also engaged as a scientific consultant with a number of industry partners. Seán is part of the editorial board of the European Journal of Medical Physics and is a peer reviewer for numerous other scientific journals.