Anuj J. Kapadia, who heads the Advanced Computing Methods for Health Sciences Section at ORNL, has been elected as president of the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, or SEAAPM.
“This appointment to an SEAAPM leadership position provides an opportunity to help impact the position, orientation and scope of medical physics in the southeastern U.S.,” said Kapadia.
Since 2009, Kapadia has served as an active member for SEAAPM’s parent organization, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, whose mission is to advance the field of medical physics. Through conferences, workshops and networking opportunities, SEAAPM provides an opportunity for collaboration, education and professional development among those involved in healthcare technology. Kapadia’s term as president will last three years, with each year split into the titles of president-elect, president and past president.
Medical physics, Kapadia said, plays an integral role in the advancement of modern medicine, from governing the use of radiation in clinical diagnostics to clinical care in radiation based therapeutic treatments.
“It bridges the gap between what we traditionally know about physics as a field and how we can safely use it for clinical care for everyone,” he added.
After earning his doctorate at Duke University in biomedical engineering in 2007, Kapadia spent over a decade with the university working as faculty in radiology, physics and medical physics, and as the director of graduate studies for the Duke Medical Physics Program. He joined ORNL in 2020, bringing a more than 20-year career that includes work in neutron and x-ray scattering, Monte Carlo simulation development and data analytics for security and medical applications.
“I have worked with radiation devices, medical imaging and have been around the clinic almost my entire career,” Kapadia said. “That kind of work spans the field of medical physics, and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, or AAPM, is the premier organization in the United States for that type of research.”
Kapadia added that the AAPM carries a wide range of responsibilities in the industry, including managing regulatory guidelines for medical physics and advising medical physics practices throughout the country and around the world.
He stressed that this position comes with the responsibility to identify shortcomings and make decisions on what impact the organization will bring to the field during his tenure.
One area Kapadia said he wants to prioritize is increasing the role of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence in clinical medicine.
“That is an area that I want to focus on and make sure we are bringing in the right tools, technologies, practices, and most importantly, the right mindset for what role AI and computing should play in clinical care,” Kapadia said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. — Mark Alewine
