PTCOG ECR Webinar Series: Emerging Research and Funding Acquisition – Part 1
🌟 New Mini-Series: Emerging Research and Funding Acquisition
To kick off the year, we are launching a new mini-series highlighting a cutting-edge research topic currently shaping the field, or a speaker who has recently secured funding, offering practical, first-hand advice on navigating funding mechanisms around the world.
In this session, Dr. Xuanfeng (Leo) Ding and Dr. Andreas Smolders will present on:
Proton arc therapy
Daily adaptive particle therapy
…and share real, actionable guidance on securing competitive research funding.
1. Xuanfeng Ding
Lead proton physicist at Corewell Health and associate professor at William Beaumont School of Medicine
2. Andreas Smolders
Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLouvain
Dr. Smolders obtained his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the KU Leuven in Belgium in 2019. After that, he did a 1-year Master in Artificial Intelligence, before starting his PhD at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, where he graduated in 2023. At the moment, Andreas works as a Postdoc at the UCLouvain in Belgium, in a collaboration with IBA and the particle center of Belgium, to improve the quality of the gantry mounted CBCT in Proton Therapy. The Postdoc has been funded by the EU Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship program, as well as the Flemish National Science Fund, and will run for a total of 3 years. In 2023, Dr. Smolders received the PTCOG Young Investigator award.
Session moderator: Sebastian Tattenberg
Postdoctoral fellow at the National Research Agency of France (CNRS) and at INSA Lyon in Lyon, France.
Dr. Tattenberg performed his PhD research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in the US and obtained his PhD from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany in January 2023. He subsequently held a Mitacs-funded position at the TRIUMF national particle accelerator center in Vancouver, Canada, as well as at Laurentian and NOSM University, both in Sudbury, Canada. Sebastian is now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Research Agency of France (CNRS) and at INSA Lyon in Lyon, France.
Date
- Dec 16 2025
- Expired!
Time
- 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
More Info
Labels
- Webinar
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PTCOG-ECR
Dr. Ding is the lead proton physicist at Corewell Health (William Beaumont University Hospital) and associate professor at William Beaumont School of Medicine, Oakland University. He received a B.S. in physics from Fudan University in 2006, a Ph.D. in physics from Wake Forest University in 2012, and residency training from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014. Dr. Ding is the principal investigator of several institutional, industry and NIH research grants and has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles, three book chapters, and over 200 conference abstracts. He is the leading inventor of particle arc therapy, licensed to IBA, enabling the DynamicARC technique. Dr. Ding also served as the president of the AAPM Great Lakes Chapter in 2020. Co-chair of ESTRO physics workshops in 2022 and 2024. Additionally, he served on different professional, educational, and scientific committees such as the MecaTech consortium (Belgium), DynamicARC consortium (IBA), AAPM research seed funding initiative, AAPM Task Groups 349, and PTCOG workgroups. In 2024, Dr. Ding received AAPM’s John Laughlin early-career scientist award for his scientific contributions to medical physics.