After
a large-scale radiological event, there will be a major need to assess, within a
few days, the radiation doses received by tens or hundreds of thousands of
individuals. Our Center is a research consortium devoted to developing high-throughput
radiation dose assessment techniques. Our goal is to develop practical
minimally-invasive devices to meet this need.
This Consortium represents a multidisciplinary balance between radiation biologists, radiation physicists, radiation chemists, mechanical engineers, software engineers, product development experts, commercial companies in the field, and end users. The three areas we have identified as having the highest potential for high-throughput biodosimetry are cytogenetics, functional genomics, and metabolomics. Each area has its own project, supported by scientific cores, a fabrication core, and a product development core.
In addition, this Consortium
features an extensive radiological teaching program, both in person, and with
an innovative E-seminars approach, and a large Pilot Research Program, featuring
a novel two-phase review procedure.
We
offered a free training course entitled Radiological Science in the Context
of Radiological Terrorism. This course has been tailored to educate
people at all levels who may be called upon to respond to a radiological event,
particularly in the context of current radiological terrorism issues.
Podcasts
from previous courses are available free for download.
We co-hosted the workshop entitled
"Predicting Individual Radiation Sensitivity: Current and Evolving Technologies"
at Columbia University on March 17-18, 2008. Extended
abstracts was published in Radiation Research 170, 666-675, 2008.
We are one of the Centers for Medical Countermeasures against Radiation.
This research is funded by the