PhD Student in MSCA Doctoral Network RAPTORplus: Assessing and improving first online

With cutting-edge research in the fields of ENERGY, HEALTH and MATTER, around 1,500 employees from more than 70 nations at Helmholtz‑Zentrum Dresden‑Rossendorf (HZDR) are committed to mastering the great challenges facing society today. At the Institute of Radiooncology – Onco Ray scientists specialized in medicine, physics, biology and IT work together to crucially improve the treatment of cancer by administering radiation therapy that is biologically-personalized and technically-optimized.

The Department of Medical Radiation Physics advertises a full-time 3-year-funded position as doctoral candidate in the EU-funded Marie Skłodowska‑Curie Doctoral Network (MSCA‑DN)
RAPTORplus “Right-time Adaptive Particle Therapy Of cance

R – personalisation through anatomical PLUS biological adaptation”. The work will be carried out in the High Precision Proton Therapy group at Onco Ray - National Center of Radiation Research in Oncology under the supervision of Dr. Kristin Stützer.

RAPTORplus employs 18 doctoral candidates at the premises of 16 Europeaninstitutions from academia, clinic and industry. It brings together more than 30 partners havingone aim in common:
To facilitate most effective adaptation in particle therapy. All doctoral candidates will pursue their own individual research project, receive training in a multidisciplinary and intersect oral program, gain hands‑on experience with state‑of‑the‑art particle therapy infrastructure and work directly on solutions designed to translate into clinical practice and commercial products.

The successful candidate for the advertised position will work on research project 2:
Assessing and improving first online adaptive proton therapy workflows of a clinic-industry consortium.

• Strengthen the connection between the clinic-industry consortium ProtOnART and RAPTORplus by gaining insight into and supporting the clinical implementation of the first ProtOnART OAPT workflow.
• Assess and further develop the OAPT workflow efficiency in Dresden with a focus on time reduction at all key steps of the treatment pathway. This includes the establishment of automated treatment session documentations for the retrospective assessment of the workflow performance and the identification (plus solving) of critical obstacles during first clinical applications in Dresden also in comparison to experiences at the partner site in Leuven.
• Work towards an automated decision support system for online adaptation with regard to economic factors and clinical measures, such as tumour‑site‑specific normal tissue complication probability.
• Conduct research on novel, fast treatment plan optimisation strategies.
• Acquire knowledge and apply the gained expertise during planned secondments: (1) Get to know industry solutions supporting precise radiotherapy of lung lesions at Brainlab SE, (2) Learn about metrics for the effectiveness assessment of adaptive proton therapy of lung lesions at Holland PTC, and (3) Apply OAPT efficacy assessment metrics/tool to other cancer site at KU Leuven.

• A Master's degree or an equivalent title in the field of Physics, Medical Physics, Medical Technology, Biomedical Engineering, Data Science or any related field
• Compliance with the MSCA mobility rule:
  You must not have resided or carried out your main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Germany for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before your recruitment date.
• High motivation to perform research at the interface of academia clinic practice and industry
• Profound knowledge in the field of proton therapy and familiarity with clinical radiotherapy workflows
• Strong analytical thinking and excellent problem‑solving skills
• Solid programming skills and interest to apply it for automation, data analysis and modelling
• Knowledge in machine learning and affinity to apply this in the radiotherapy field is an asset
• Independent, pro‑active, structured and solution‑oriented work attitude
• Strong communication and presentation skills
• Enjoyment to work as a real team player within a group of multidisciplinary professionals
• Proficiency in spoken and written English
• As the research project involves temporary…