LIP Mini-School on Charged Particle Therapy Applications
"The school gathered the fast-growing community of particle therapy students in Portugal in a hybrid event which included a one-day in-person workshop at LIP-Lisbon"
The School was held from the 2nd to the 9th of December and had around 40 participants: students, supervisors and invited speakers. The chosen format was hybrid: during the week there were lectures exclusively online. On Saturday an in-person workshop was held at the LIP auditorium in Lisbon, with zoom connection also available.
The program consisted of a combination of student talks and invited talks by experts from different institutions and countries. Each morning started with an invited talk followed by a discussion. After that the student talks would start. The topics covered in the student talks included range verification, fibre detectors, imaging, minibeams, flash therapy and nanoparticles.
The invited speakers were José Marques (ProtoTera Association President - IST/CTN) on “The ProtoTera Network Status”; João Seco (DKFZ, Germany) with an update on the “State of the art on FLASH Therapy”; Tiago Madaleno (IPO Lisboa) talinkg about “Clinical practice”; Yolanda Prezado (Institut Curie, Université PSL, Orsay, France) on “New approaches on radioterapy” and Manjit Dosanjh (CERN) discussing “Charged Particle therapy and CERN”.
The interest and the number of students in this field has grown fast in the last couple of years, with the creation of the ProtoTera association for the installation of a proton therapy centre in Portugal, with dedicated PhD grants calls. However, the pandemic and the geographycal spread of people made it hard for the members of this recent community to learn about the ongoing activites, and to get to know each other. For this reason, the Saturday workshop was a particularly welcome convivial opportunity, which is documented in the photo.
