Duke University Medical Physics Graduate Program

🎓 Celebrating the Duke Medical Physics Class of 2026 🎓
On May 9, the Duke Medical Physics Graduate Program proudly celebrated the Class of 2026 at the annual Awards and Diplomas Ceremony at the Washington Duke Inn.
This year, 17 Master of Science and 9 Doctor of Philosophy graduates were recognized alongside faculty and students honored for excellence in leadership, scholarship, teaching, and service.
Program Director Mark Oldham encouraged graduates to remain connected to the Duke Medical Physics community, and challenged them to lead the future of medicine through scientific expertise, innovation, and professionalism. In her student address, Njood Alsaihati reflected on her personal journey and urged her classmates to carry forward the program’s lessons of excellence, integrity, community, and responsibility.From heartfelt diploma presentations to shared memories and celebrations with family, friends, and faculty, the day marked an unforgettable milestone for our graduates.
Congratulations to the Duke Medical Physics Class of 2026! We are proud of all you have accomplished and look forward to the impact you will make in the future of medical physics. 💙

Read more: https://medicalphysics.duke.edu/news/celebrating-the-duke-medical-physics-class-of-2026/

On April 10, 2026, the Duke Medical Physics Graduate Program hosted its Annual Research Symposium, bringing together students, faculty, and alumni for an exciting showcase of discovery and collaboration. The event featured 30 research posters highlighting cutting-edge work across the field.
We were especially honored to welcome Irina Vergalasova, PhD, DABR as keynote speaker and recipient of the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award. Her leadership in brachytherapy physics, dedication to education, and lasting impact on the profession exemplify the very best of Duke Medical Physics.
The day concluded with recognition of outstanding student research—congratulations to all of our poster award winners for their exceptional work!
Read more: https://medicalphysics.duke.edu/news/medical-physics-graduate-program-annual-research-symposium-and-distinguished-alumni-awardee/

Mingyue Chen, MS, successfully defended her Scholarship Project titled “Reinforcement Learning for Automated IMRT Treatment Planning: Mathematical Formulation for Optimized Reward Function Design” on April 10, 2026. Guided by Jackie Wu, PhD and Yang Sheng, PhD, this marks an important milestone in Mingyue’s academic journey. Congratulations, Mingyue!

Big news from Duke Medical Physics! 🎉
We’re thrilled to celebrate an incredible achievement—14 of our graduate students matched to top residency programs across the country in the 2026 cycle!
From radiation therapy (RT) to diagnostic imaging (DI), this talented group of MS and PhD students is heading to some of the nation’s leading institutions. Their success reflects not only their hard work and dedication, but also the strength of the training and mentorship at Duke University.
👏 Join us in congratulating our outstanding graduates.
We are so proud of you and can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make in the field of medical physics!
Read more: https://medicalphysics.duke.edu/news/duke-medical-physics-graduate-students-achieve-outstanding-residency-match-success/

Great job and congratulations, Roberto Carrascosa, MS (Advisor: Scott Robertson, PhD) on defending your thesis on March 31, 2026, titled: “Development and Validation of Tools for Virtual Imaging Trials of Ultrafast Breast MRI.” Roberto Carrascosa’s research focused on development of software tools for simulating Ultrafast Breast MRI in order to optimize clinical protocols. This accomplishment reflects his hard work and dedication — well done, Roberto!

We are excited to share that Justin Simmons, MS (Advisor: Timothy Turkington, PhD) has successfully defended his Master’s thesis titled “Analysis of PET Image Quality Using 2D vs 3D ROIs in Small Spheres” on March 31, 2026. Congratulations to Justin on reaching this important academic milestone!

We are delighted to celebrate Katherine Moeser, MS (Advisor: Timothy Turkington, PhD), on the successful defense of her master’s thesis on March 30, 2026, titled “Respiration-Related Attenuation Artifacts in PET/CT.” Congratulations on this outstanding achievement!

We are thrilled to celebrate Jingtong Zhao, PhD (Advisors: Chunhao Wang, PhD and Deshan Yang, PhD), on the successful defense of her Doctoral dissertation on March 30, 2026, titled “Explainable AI and Advanced Mathematical Modeling for Radiotherapy Outcome Assessment.” Congratulations on this fantastic accomplishment!

Please join us in celebrating Yakun Zhang, PhD (Advisor: Ehsan Samei, PhD), who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on March 27, 2026. Her dissertation, “Systemic Integration of Retrospective Analysis for Optimizing CT Imaging Practice,” focused on improving CT quality monitoring through quantitative image quality metrics that better reflect clinical performance. Specifically, she investigates organ-specific image noise and task-based detectability in large clinical CT datasets, examining how these measures vary with patient size, imaging technique, and reconstruction settings to identify clinically meaningful image quality differences across scanners and institutions.

Warm congratulations to Runhe Tan, MS (Advisor: Kyle Lafata, PhD) on successfully defending his Master’s thesis on March 27, 2026. His thesis, “Investigating Intra-tumoral Heterogenity Driven by Nutrient Dynamics and Radiotherapy Using an In-silico Avascular Tumor Growth Model,” focused on developing computational tumor growth models to study how nutrient dynamics and radiation response shape intra-tumoral heterogeneity, and on translating those patterns into image-based features for radiomics analysis.