CERN70

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Ugo Amaldi has been the president of the Italian Foundation TERA (Tumour Therapy with Hadronic Radiations) since its inception in 1992. In the 1960s, he served as the Director of Research at the National Health Institutes in Rome (ISS), focusing on radiation physics and nuclear physics. In 1973, he joined CERN as a senior physicist, specializing in particle physics and accelerator developments. From 1981 to 1994, he led the international DELPHI collaboration, which comprised about five hundred physicists from twenty countries. He held the position of Physics Professor in Florence and Milan between 1990 and 2006. He has been awarded Doctor honoris causa by the Universities of Lyon, Helsinki, Uppsala, and Valencia and is a Fellow of the European Physical Society and a Distinguished Affiliated Professor at the Technische Universität München (TUM). He received the first edition of the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize for his contributions to the study of weak interactions and the unification of fundamental forces. Under his leadership, TERA, in collaboration with CERN, has developed novel types of accelerators for tumour therapy. Over the last 30 years, more than one third of Italian high school students have studied physics on his textbooks.

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Samira Asma is the Assistant Director-General for Data, Analytics and Delivery for Impact at the World Health Organization (WHO), where she ensures that health data are reliable, accessible, and used to improve health outcomes worldwide. She leads WHO’s efforts to track and accelerate progress towards the Triple Billion targets and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals as well co-leading the game-changing Universal Health Preparedness Review. Dr Asma also oversees initiatives that support countries to deliver a measurable impact, including improving data quality, timeliness, and accessibility. Before joining WHO in 2018, Dr Asma held leadership positions at the U.S, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for over two decades. During her tenure at the CDC, she established global health programmes, launched a worldwide initiative to reduce heart attacks and strokes, and led the development of a reliable and sustained surveillance system for tobacco control in 180 countries. Dr Asma has authored over 150 publications, books, and policy papers on global health and public health surveillance. She is widely recognized as an expert in preventing leading risk factors that cause premature deaths. 

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Dario Bressanini teaches Food Chemistry and Technology at the University of Insubria, Como. His academic journey includes significant periods of study and research at the University of California (Berkeley) and Georgetown University (Washington DC). He is a prominent figure in science communication, with over a million followers on social media. He curates the “Pots and Test Tubes” column for Le Scienze magazine, focusing on the scientific aspects of food. He is also known for hosting the television program “Cosmo, siamo tutti una rete” on Rai 3, and the programs “Moebius” and “Il Gastronauta” on Radio 24, focused on intriguing scientific and culinary topics. He collaborates with “Radiotelevisione svizzera di lingua italiana” (RSI), and has published several books, including “Bread and Lies” (Chiarelettere, 2010), “Against Nature” (Rizzoli, 2015) – co-authored with Beatrice Mautino, “The Science of Cleaning” (Gribaudo, 2022), and “Is It Good or Bad for You?” (Mondadori, 2023). In “Doctor Newtron” (Feltrinelli, 2023) Dario Bressanini explores the interactions between science and comic books, including his own experience as a hadron therapy cancer patient.

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Michael Campbell is a senior engineer at CERN. He is spokesperson of the Medipix Collaborations which seek to disseminate pixel detector technology from High Energy Physics to many different fields. The work of the Collaborations has enabled new approaches in diverse domains ranging from dosimetry in space to radiation detection in classrooms and from industrial X-ray applications all the way through to spectroscopic medical X-ray imaging. The Collaborations have also pioneered the development of high granularity timing detectors used both at CERN experiments and in various quantum imaging applications. Michael Campbell received his PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, and has authored several hundred scientific publications. In 2016, he was appointed Honorary Professor of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow. 

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Manjit Dosanjh is the former senior advisor for medical applications at CERN and now a retired staff and Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the UK and her professional efforts in the fields of biology and the medical applications of physics span more than 30 years, during which she has held positions in various academic and research institutions in Europe and the U.S., including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) at the University of California, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) in Italy. She joined CERN in 2000 and focused on applying the technologies developed for particle physics to the life sciences domain and establishing multidisciplinary collaborative approaches for cancer treatment. Her work has included many initiatives to expand access to technology in Low Middle-Income Countries and she is the Project Leader for STELLA (Smart Technologies to Extend Lives with Linear Accelerators) for ICEC (www.iceccancer.org). Manjit is also the Coordinator of ENLIGHT (European Network for Light Ion Hadron Therapy).

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Antoine Geissbuhler is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva, where he also serves as a Professor of Medicine, Director of Teaching and Research, and the Chief Physician of the Division of eHealth and Telemedicine at Geneva University Hospitals. He is a Past-President of the International Medical Informatics Association and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informaticians. After training in internal medicine at Geneva University and a post-doctoral fellowship, he was an Associate Professor of biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University. He returned to Geneva in 1999 to oversee the development of medical information systems at Geneva University Hospitals. He directs the WHO’s Collaborating Centre for eHealth and holds the UNESCO Chair in Digital Medical Education. His team, Hi5lab, works on digital health at local, national, European, and international levels. In 2020, he launched the Geneva Digital Health Hub to foster data-driven digital health policies and initiatives, including the Space and Global Health network.

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John O. Prior is Professor and Head of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Lausanne University Hospital. After graduating from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich (ETH Zurich), he received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas (UTSW) and a MD from the University of Lausanne. He underwent thereafter specialization training in nuclear medicine and a visiting associate professor fellowship at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He is International Associate Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, and Editorial Board Member of the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine (EJNMMI), EJNMMI Research, and Médecine nucléaire et biologie. He is currently President of the Swiss Society of Nuclear Medicine, President of the Nuclear Medicine Section of the Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes (UEMS), and Liaison Officer between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology (WFNMB).

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Magdalena Rafecas is Full Professor of Instrumentation in Medical Imaging at the Institute of Medical Engineering of the University of Lübeck, where she has established and is leading the Nuclear Imaging research group. She is also responsible for the establishment of a new facility dedicated to pre-clinical nuclear imaging. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and an elected member of the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Council within the IEEE. With a career trajectory that began at CERN and progressed through prestigious institutions like Technische Universität München, University of Tübingen, and Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC, Valencia), Magdalena Rafecas’ research focuses on Nuclear Medical Imaging, mainly in Emission Tomography and novel imaging concepts. Her expertise encompasses several imaging scenarios and modalities, from small-animal and clinical settings to dose verification in particle therapy, and it covers formal aspects, such as modelling and image reconstruction, as well as simulation, experimental activities, scanner development.

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Esther Troost is a distinguished leader in radiotherapy and radiation oncology, currently Co-Chair of Department of Radiotherapy and Radiation Oncology of the University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus of TUD Dresden University of Technology, Germany. Specializing in image-guided high-precision radiotherapy, her research emphasizes individualized medicine in photon- and proton-based radiotherapy and translating findings into clinical practice. With numerous publications in top-tier journals and important recognitions such as the ESTRO Varian Award, Esther Troost is committed to advancing radiotherapy accuracy and precision and identifying new fields of application. She fosters global collaboration and knowledge exchange, holding key positions in prestigious institutions including the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and OncoRay – National Center for Radiation Research in Oncology. Troost’s career trajectory reflects her dedication to improving cancer treatment outcomes and patient care on a global scale.