Marko Moscovitch, Professor
Program Director – Health Physics
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E202A
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 202/687-8993 or 2212
E-mail: moscovim@georgetown.edu

Dr. Moscovitch is a Professor in the departments of Radiation Medicine and Physiology & Biophysics and is the Director of the Health Physics Graduate Program at Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D. degree from Ben Gurion University (Israel) in 1985. Dr. Moscovitch is an internationally recognized expert in his field of radiation dosimetry and has done extensive work in the areas of neutron detection, thermoluminescence and thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD), microdosimetry, and theoretical radiation physics. Through the years his research was supported by NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) who provided funding to develop new radiation detection technologies. In addition, he recently received a major training grant from DOE for the purpose of expanding the graduate Health Physics Program to include a new track in Nuclear Nonproliferation studies. Dr. Moscovitch is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Solid State Dosimetry (SSD) Conference and he conceived and co-directed the SSD summer school. He is one of the recipients of the Health Physics Faculty Award, which was given by DOE for outstanding researchers and educators in the field of Health Physics. Dr. Moscovitch serves as a consultant to industry and has received the R&D 100 award for the co-invention and development of the latest generation of the Thermo Electron (Harshaw) personnel radiation dosimetry systems. He is the Chairman of an ANSI Environmental Dosimetry Standards working group and a member of the editorial board of /Radiation Protection Dosimetry/, which is published by Oxford University Press. In addition, he served on various DOE study sections related to nuclear nonproliferation. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications including a book, and a special issue of Nuclear Instruments and Methods on advanced topics in radiation dosimetry, and received 12 U.S. patents.

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Allen Brodsky, Adjunct Professor
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E202A
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 703/678-8034
E-mail: Albrodsky@aol.com

Dr. Allen Brodsky, Adjunct Professor of Radiation Medicine, has a broad background of experience and education related to radiation science and radiation safety spanning over more than 55 years in a number of agencies, medical institutions, and universities. Education includes a B.E. in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins, M.A. in physics from Johns Hopkins, and Sc.D. in biostatistics and radiation health from the University of Pittsburgh. Certifications are in health physics CHP), industrial hygiene (CIH), and radiation therapy physics (DABR). Research experience includes radiation intensity and spectral measurements of nuclear weapons signals, stochastic modeling of carcinogenesis, neutron dosimetry and spectroscopy, personnel dosimetry, radiation epidemiology, and advances in statistical analysis of laboratory data. Applied experience includes developing regulations and regulatory guides in government agencies, hazard evaluations on all type of facilities handling radioactive material, evaluation of internal and external exposures in management of radiation accident cases, and managing radiation safety offices at several medical and teaching institutions. His teaching involves sharing many methods published in his books and papers to provide the student with abundant methods and data for solving problems in dose measurement, dose estimation, dose reconstruction, and risk estimation. His many awards include the Health Physics Society’s Robley D. Evans Medal in 2001, and a Distinguished Graduate Award from the Graduate School in Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 2004.

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Timothy Jorgensen, Associate Professor
Departments of Radiation Medicine, and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E212
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 202/687-1810
E-mail: tjorge01@georgetown.edu

Background
Dr. Jorgensen’s research has focused on radioresponses in human cells, with the goal of identifying major regulatory proteins in radioresponse pathways. Typically, radiation damage to DNA in the cell nucleus initiates a cascade of cellular responses designed to both facilitate DNA repair and stall, or "arrest", any further cell division until the repair processes are completed. Thus, DNA repair and cell cycle progression must be tightly coordinated in order to recover from the effects of radiation damage, and this coordinated response is probably the first line of defense that cells employ to resist both the lethal and carcinogenic effects of radiation. Initially Dr. Jorgensen’s investigations focused primarily on DNA repair pathways; however, as the coordinated actions of DNA repair and cell cycle arrest pathways has been better appreciated, his more recent studies have expanded to include signal transduction proteins such as ATM, p53, p21, and Chk1. ATM is the gene responsible for the autosomal recessive disease ataxia telangiectasia and has been implicated in breast cancer risk. ATM plays a major role in regulating radioresponse functions, including DNA repair and cell cycle arrest, primarily by binding to DNA double strand breaks, which then activates its PI-3 kinase activity and results in its phosphorylation and activation of a host of proteins known to be important to human radioresponses. The most noteworthy of these phosphorylated proteins is the tumor suppressor gene p53, which becomes stabilized and transcriptionally activates many downstream proteins, including p21, a major initiator of cell cycle arrest, and the most radiation responsive protein known (e.g. expression elevated up to 100-fold by ionizing radiation). Dr. Jorgensen has found that a cell cycle regulatory protein, Chk1, may also be an important upstream regulator of p53 and p21 radioresponses.

Accomplishments
Dr. Jorgensen has conducted studies of radioresponses governed by ATM in collaboration with the discoverer of the gene, Yosef Shiloh. This work showed that expression of recombinant ATM in cells from ataxia telangiectasia patients completely eliminated their radiosensitive phenotype, and restored their post-irradiation survival to wild-type levels (Oncogene 15:159-167, 1997). ATM phosphorylates, stabilizes, and elevates p53 in response to irradiation. p53, in turn, activates transcription of the cell cycle inhibitor protein p21, which initiates cell cycle arrest and is believed to be an important radioprotective response. Dr. Jorgensen’s laboratory has shown that down-regulation of p21 radiosensitizes cells to radiation-induced apoptosis (Fig. 1), and is potentially a useful molecular target for radiotherapy of colon cancer (Cancer Res. 60: 679-684, 2000). These findings supported Dr. Jorgensen’s earlier observation that cells deficient in expression of thymidine kinase (TK) -- an enzyme that synthesizes DNA precursors -- were significantly more radiosensitive than cells with normal TK expression levels (Cancer Res. 54: 5614-5617, 1994). In those studies, TK deficiency was associated with enhanced radiation-induced apoptosis.

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Mira O. Jung, Professor
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E208
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 202/687-8352
E-mail: jungm@georgetown.edu

Mira Jung, Ph.D. received her basic training in molecular biology and microbiology at the University of Kansas, and postdoctoral training in radiation biology and molecular biology at Georgetown University. She is currently Professor and Director of Molecular Radiation Laboratory and Microarray Core-Facility in Radiation Medicine and Microbiology at Georgetown University Medical Center. The research focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying radiation sensitivity. Identification of factors associated with the responses of mammalian cells to ionizing radiation has been a major area of her research. The research contributions include the findings that NF-kB activation is a critical mechanism for cell survival of cells from patients with the human radiation sensitivity syndrome of ataxia-telangiectasia and the mutated AT gene product, ATM, is involved in this process. Recently, her research has made an important breakthrough in signal transduction studies that implicate the chromatin structure modification in the mechanism in radiation sensitivity. Thus, the overall research goals are to determine mechanisms of radiation responses of tumor cell lines, identify targets for therapeutic gain, and develop strategies for using this knowledge for future development of translational research projects.

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Usha Kasid, Professor
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E208
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 202/687-2226
E-mail: Kasidu@georgetown.edu

Research Area: Molecular Tumor Biology and Developmental Therapeutics.
Research Interests: Raf-Erk Signaling; new molecular targets; tumor growth, metastasis and cell survival; target-based cancer therapies; radio/chemosensitization; head and neck, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

Vicente Notario, Professor
Georgetown University
The Research Building, Room E215
Telephone: 202/687-2102
E-mail: notariov@georgetown.edu

Dr. Vicente Notario is Professor of Radiation Medicine and Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology. He is also Director of the Division of Radiation Research in the Department of Radiation Medicine, and Leader of the Radiation Biology Program of the V.T. Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Notario's research focuses on the study of molecular mechanisms of development of malignant tumors, and involves the investigation of the effects of environmental carcinogens, such as chemical pollutants and radiation, on mammalian cells with regard to the expression and activity of cancer genes and their protein products. Currently, there are three main research areas in Dr. Notario's laboratory: 1) characterization of the molecular mechanism of action of a novel oncogene, termed PCPH, originally isolated in Dr. Notario’s laboratory, and functional studies on its role in the development of prostate cancer; 2) preclinical studies of molecular targeting approaches to block the activity of the EWS/FLI-1 oncogene present in tumors of the Ewing’s sarcoma family, and 3) mechanistic analyses of the involvement of the Dlk1 protein in determining the invasiveness and metastatic program of human lung tumors cells of the small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) type. Additional ongoing pilot experiments involve studies on the anti-cancer actions of human dietary components. Dr. Notario's research has been continuously funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute from 1989 through 2008.

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Gary Phillips, Adjunct Associate Professor
Georgetown University
The Research Building, Room E202A
Telephone: 202/687-6337
E-mail: phillipg@georgetown.edu

Dr. Gary Phillips is currently Adjunct Associate Professor in the Radiation Medicine department, performing research in nuclear radiation detection and neutron spectrometry and teaching in the graduate Health Physics program. His research involves the evelopment of optical radiation detectors for nuclear non- proliferation applications. Dr. Phillips received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of Maryland, College Park followed by postdoctoral appointments at the University of Washington, Seattle and the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to coming to Georgetown University he was head of the Radiation Detection section at the US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. At NRL he led a project to develop radiation analysis software for Navy sensors, managed a multilaboratory program to develop a ruggedized, fieldable array of high-resolution gamma-ray detectors, developed innovative gamma-ray imaging techniques and flew experiments to study radionuclide concentrations in orbit. While at NRL he led a Navy team in a congressionally mandated program to investigate nuclear and chemical pollution in Siberia and in the Arctic seas and conducted an environmental remediation study at mixed nuclear and chemical waste sites in US DOD facilities.

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David A. Schauer, Adjunct Instructor
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E202A
Washington, D.C. 20007
Telephone: 301/295-9806
E-mail: schauer@ncrp.com

Dr. David A. Schauer is Executive Director of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and a member of the adjunct faculty of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. He received his graduate degrees from Georgetown (MS) and Johns Hopkins University (ScD) and is a board certified health physicist (CHP). Dr. Schauer served as a naval officer from 1984 to 2004 and during this time he held numerous positions including Science Advisor of the Naval Dosimetry Center in Bethesda, MD. He has authored or co-authored over 25 journal articles, book chapters, proceedings and technical reports. Dr. Schauer serves on the Editorial Boards of Radiation Protection Dosimetry and Radiation Measurements and has given over 15 invited and keynote lectures. His primary research interests are personnel dosimetry, biodosimetry and radiation effects.

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Christopher G. Soares, Ph.D., Adjunct Instructor
Georgetown University
3970 Reservoir Road, N.W.
The Research Building, Room E202A
Washington, DC 20007
Telephone: 301/975-5589
E-mail: csg@georgetown.edu

Dr. Soares is a physicist in the Ionizing Radiation Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He has been at NIST, in the Dosimetry Group (now known as the Radiation Interactions and Dosimetry Group) since 1975. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida, and since being at NIST has worked on ionizing radiation measurement of photon and beta particle radiation fields with TLDs, ionization chambers, scintillation detectors, radiochromic film, and solid state detectors. His current research centers on absorbed dose to water measurements of photon and beta particle brachytherapy sources. He is a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), and a US delegate to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Dr. Soares is the course director is RASC 501, Introductory Health Physics.

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List of Students and Alumnus

Selected Publications by Faculty