Committee and Staff Biographical Sketches
Chair
BARBARA J. MCNEIL
Barbara J. McNeil, M.D., Ph.D. (IOM) is the Ridley Watts Professor and was the founding head of the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School (HMS) in 1988. She was one of the first women professors in the quad at HMS. She is also a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). She continues to practice nuclear medicine one day a week at BWH. She was interim dean of Harvard Medical School during summer 2007. Dr. McNeil received her A.B. degree from Emmanuel College, her M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, and her Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. McNeil is also a member of the Blue Cross Technology Evaluation Commission; she formerly chaired the Medicare Evidence Development Coverage Advisory Committee (Med-CAC), and she is now a member of that committee. She currently chairs the Science Board of the FDA. She serves as an advisor for several other federal and private organizations. Dr. McNeil formerly served on the Publications Committee of the New England Journal of Medicine as well as on the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission. Dr. McNeil’s original career involved research in decision analysis and cost-effective analysis. More recently, her work has focused on quality of care and technology assess-
ment. Her research involves relationships with payers, providers, and the federal government. Her largest ongoing study compares quality of care in the VA system with that in the private setting for patients with cancer. For several years she coordinated several large studies comparing the value of alternative imaging modalities for patients with cancer.
Vice-Chair
HEDVIG HRICAK
Hedvig Hricak, M.D., Ph.D. (IOM) is chairman of the Department of Radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She holds a senior position within the Program of Molecular and Pharmacology Therapeutics at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. She is a professor at Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and is a professor of radiology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She earned her M.D. degree from the University of Zagreb and her Dr. Med. Sc. from the Karolinska Institute. In 2005 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in medicine (Dr.h.c.) from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. She has helped develop applications in ultrasound, magnetic resonance (MR), and CT for gynecological cancers as well as MR and MR spectroscopy for prostate cancer. She continues to investigate diagnostic methods for cancer detection, staging, and management and is involved in developing clinical approaches for molecular imaging of cancer. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002. In recognition of her career accomplishments, she has received the Marie Curie Award of the American Association of Women Radiologists (2003), the gold medals of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (2003) and the Association of University Radiologists, the Béclère medal of the International Society of Radiology (2007), the Morocco Medal of Merit (2008), and the Katarina Zrinska Croatian presidential award (2009).
Members
AMY BERRINGTON DE GONZÁLEZ
Amy Berrington de González, received a Ph.D. in cancer epidemiology from the University of Oxford in 2001. She conducted post-doctoral research in Oxford before joining the faculty there. In 2005 she became an assistant professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She joined the Radiation Epidemiology Branch as an investigator in 2008. She is currently serving on the UK Health Protection Agency’s Advisory Group on Ionising Radiation, and she has previ-
ously served on the UK Breast Screening Programme’s Advisory Group and as a special advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) on radiation effects and health. Dr. Berrington has conducted a series of risk projection studies to estimate the potential cancer risks from both diagnostic and screening examinations, including cardiac stress tests, CT colonography, and lung CT screening. To perform these studies, she and other collaborators developed the NCI Radiation Risk Assessment Tool (RadRAT), which is interactive computer software that uses state-of-the-art risk projection models to estimate lifetime cancer risks and incorporates Monte Carlo simulation methods to assess the impact of uncertainties in the assumptions and data. She recently became the NCI principal investigator for the UK Pediatric CT scans study, which is a retrospective cohort study of 250,000 children who had one or more CT scans as children or adolescents.
WALTER HUDA
Walter Huda, Ph.D., trained in England (B.A., physics at Oxford University; Ph.D., medical physics at the Hammersmith Hospital/University of London) and worked from 1976 to 1981 at Amersham International, a commercial company specializing in radioactive products. He has worked as a diagnostic medical physicist at the Manitoba Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in Winnipeg, Canada (1982-1990), University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida (1990-1997), and SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York (1997-2007). He is currently professor of radiology at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Huda is actively involved in the clinical use of medical imaging equipment, particularly maximizing the diagnostic information while keeping patient doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). Dr. Huda’s primary research activities relate to medical imaging and radiation dosimetry. Since the early 1980s, Dr Huda pioneered the use of the effective dose to quantify the radiation dose received by patients undergoing radiological examinations that use ionizing radiation. Dr. Huda has also developed quantitative methods for quantifying imaging performance. Dr. Huda is currently actively involved in the use of Alternative Forced Choice (AFC) methods for measuring imaging performance in CT and the investigation of the tradeoff between dose and image quality in this imaging modality. Dr. Huda has published more than 200 scientific papers and has been awarded 24 research grants with a total value approaching $4 million.
FRED A. METTLER, JR.
Fred A. Mettler, Jr., M.D., M.P.H., is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Radiology at the University of New Mexico, School of
Medicine. He is currently in radiology and nuclear medicine service at the New Mexico VA Medical Center. He earned an M.D. degree from Thomas Jefferson University and an M.P.H. from Harvard University, and he completed his residency in radiology and nuclear medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Mettler has authored more than 300 scientific publications, including 18 books, and holds 4 patents. He is currently the U.S. representative to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, an emeritus commissioner of the International Commission on Radiation Protection, and a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection.
RICHARD L. MORIN
Richard L. Morin, Ph.D., received his Ph.D. in radiological sciences from the University of Oklahoma in 1980. His dissertation concerned the use of Monte Carlo simulation and pattern recognition for artifact removal in CYT. He is a fellow of the American College of Radiology and a diplomate of the American Board of Radiology in Diagnostic Radiological Physics and Nuclear Medical Physics. Dr. Morin is the secretary-treasurer and trustee of the American Board of Radiology and the chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Board of Imaging Informatics. Dr. Morin is a former president and chairman of the Board of the American Association of Physicist in Medicine and the Board of Chancellors of the American College of Radiology. Dr. Morin has presented numerous lectures at international and scientific meetings and has published more than 80 research papers. His current research interests include computer applications in the radiological sciences with emphasis on electronic medical imaging and CT physics with emphasis on CT cardiovascular imaging.
Staff
OURANIA (RANIA) KOSTI
Rania Kosti, Ph.D., joined the staff of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board in January 2011. Prior to her current appointment, Dr. Kosti was a post-doctoral fellow at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., where she conducted research on biomarker development for early cancer detection using case-control epidemiologic study designs. She focused primarily on prostate, breast, and liver cancers and trying to identify those individuals who are at high risk of developing malignancies. She contributed on hypotheses generation, study design, data analysis, and management of clinical databases and biospecimen repositories. Dr. Kosti also trained at the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) (2005-2007) in the Cancer and Developmental Biology Laboratory; during the same period she volunteered in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Dr. Kosti received a B.Sc. in biochemistry from the University of Surrey, United Kingdom, an M.Sc. in molecular medicine from the University College London, and a Ph.D. in molecular endocrinology from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.
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