Research Training in Medical Physics

 描述（由申请人提供）：在医学物理学（“医学物理学研究培训”）领域的拟议博士前培训计划代表了这个成功和长期的研究生课程的26至30年的竞争性更新。博士培养学位是通过医学物理学研究生课程进行的，该课程在芝加哥大学医学物理学委员会内运作。该计划自20世纪50年代中期以来一直在培训学生，目前正在通过21名教师培训师的专门参与培训20名研究生博士前学员。该计划每年为6名博士前学生提供资金。芝加哥大学医学物理学研究生课程为学员提供严格的课程，并结合医学成像和放射治疗物理学的指导研究。接触教学机会和科学道德和负责任的研究行为的必修课程形成了博士前培训的一个基本要素。 医学物理学研究生课程的质量不断发展，包括（1）课程要求的重组，（2）第一年研究轮换要求的修订，目的是让学生在最多一年后进入实验室进行论文研究（四个学术季度）在该计划，（3）创建一个必要的道德课程（“医学物理学家的生物伦理学”）专门针对医学物理学学员的特定领域需求，（4）开发新课程（健康物理学和分子成像），以涵盖已成为国家标准一部分或学生感兴趣的医学物理学领域的各个方面，以及（5）启动医学物理学职业发展系列讲座。 该计划的教师继续解决毕业的时间长度。医学物理学是一个广泛的领域，需要从成像物理到放射治疗物理的广泛主题的能力。因此，医学物理学研究生课程的学生（相对于其他学科的同事）必须学习更多的课程才能获得跨领域的核心知识。尽管如此，学生的最佳利益和程序服务时，学生提出了一个明确的过程，以及时毕业。这样一个明确的过程，以减少学生毕业所需的平均时间对学生和教师都是有用的，因为毕业时间必然取决于两个群体的合作：学生需要表现出主动性，他们必须寻求及时指导教师的导师，而教师必须使自己作为导师，他们需要让学生负责推进研究项目。已经对该方案进行了改进，并继续监测其有效性，作为缩短学生毕业平均所需时间的措施。 拟议的培训计划是必要的，以确保未来的医学物理研究人员在进入学术界或工业界之前有适当和完整的培训。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed pre-doctoral training program in the field of medical physics ("Research Training in Medical Physics") represents a competitive renewal for Years 26 to 30 of this successful and long-standing graduate program. Training toward the Ph.D. degree is conducted through the Graduate Program in Medical Physics, which functions within the Committee on Medical Physics at The University of Chicago. This program has been training students since the mid-1950s and is currently training 20 graduate student pre-doctoral trainees through the dedicated participation of 21 faculty trainers. The proposed program seeks funding for six pre-doctoral students per year. The Graduate Program in Medical Physics at The University of Chicago provides trainees with a complete curriculum of rigorous courses combined with mentored research in medical imaging and radiation therapy physics. Exposure to teaching opportunities and required courses in scientific ethics and the responsible conduct of research forms an essential element of the pre-doctoral training. The quality of the Graduate Program in Medical Physics has continued to evolve with improvements including (1) reorganization of the curricular requirements, (2) revision of the first-year research rotation requirement with the intent of having students commit to a lab for their thesis research after at most one full year (four academic quarters) in the Program, (3) creation of a required ethics course ("Bioethics for Medical Physicists") tailored specifically to the domain-specific needs of medical physics trainees, (4) development of new courses (in health physics and molecular imaging) to cover aspects of the field of medical physics that have become part of national standards or have become of interest to students, and (5) initiation of a medical physics career development lecture series. The Program faculty continues to address the length of time to graduation. Medical physics is a broad field that requires competence in a wide range of topics from imaging physics to radiation therapy physics. Therefore, students in the Graduate Program in Medical Physics (relative to their colleagues in other disciplines) must take a greater number of courses to gain the core knowledge that spans the field. Nevertheless, the best interests of the students and the Program are served when students are presented with a clear process toward a timely graduation. Such a defined process to reduce the average time it takes students to graduate is useful for both students and faculty, since time to graduation necessarily depends on the cooperation of both groups: students need to demonstrate initiative and they must seek timely guidance from their faculty mentor, while faculty must make themselves available as mentors and they need to hold students accountable for advancing the research project. Improvements to the Program have been implemented and continue to be monitored in their effectiveness as measures to reduce the average time it takes students to graduate. The proposed training program is required to insure that medical physics researchers of tomorrow have proper and complete training prior to entry into academics or industry.