Postdoctoral position at RPI in modeling respiratory motion during cancer radiation therapy

Brief description: There is an
opening for a postdoctoral research position in the Advanced Computational
Research Laboratory at RPI, Troy, NY to work on an ongoing R01 reesearch project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health on the modeling of respiratory motion from patient-specific 4D CT images. In external beam radiation treatment, a lethal radiation dose is delivered through precisely conformed
external radiation to the tumor while sparing the adjacent healthy tissues.
However, the current paradigm is based on an assumption that both tumor
location and shape are known and remain unchanged during the course of
radiation delivery. Such a favorable rigid-body relationship does not exist in
anatomical sites such as the thoracic cavity and the abdomen, owing
predominantly to respiratory motions. When the tumor-bearing normal organs move during radiation therapy, discrepancies between planned and actually delivered radiation doses can be quite
significant. As a result, although higher radiation doses have shown better
local tumor control, organ motions have unfortunately required less aggressive
treatment strategies having relatively large dose margin to tolerate potential
targeting errors. To overcome this problem we are developing physics-based, 4D
motion-simulating virtual-human models to study complex radiation interactions
in tissues and dose distribution patterns for various radiation delivery
strategies using advanced Monte Carlo simulations.
  

Qualifications:        

1. PhD in Computational/Applied Mechanics or
   related field
2. Sound background in continuum Mechanics
3. Knowledge in Biomechanics
4. Sound background in nonlinear finite
   element analysis.
5. Experience in large scale computational
   code development in C++ necessary
6. Experience in code development on
   massively parallel systems highly desirable

RPI is home to CCNI,  the most powerful university-based supercomputing facility in the world
(7th in the top 500 list)