Working environment
Within the “PARticle Therapy REsearch Center (PARTREC)” imbedded in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Sciences and Technology of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), we have an immediate opening for an Assistant Professor or Associate Professor, commensurate with experience, in Radiation Science. The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary team of 35 physicists, engineers and technicians embedded in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Sciences and Technology at UMCG. He/she will lead and manage the activities related to the pre-clinical studies at PARTREC, in particular the utilization of the newly funded KWF state of the art IMPACT small animal irradiation room, will acquire research funding and lead the pre-clinical research, and will supervise graduate and postgraduate students.
At present, the UMCG is one of the largest hospitals in the Netherlands and the largest employer in the Northern Netherlands with more than 13,000 employees and takes care of an adherence region of over 2.5 million inhabitants in the north of the Netherlands. The UMCG is ISO-certified for patient care, teaching, training and research. The University of Groningen (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, RUG) is a top 100 university in international rankings. UMCG foresees an important role for particle therapy in general and proton therapy in particular, both for patient care and for research. Therefore, UMCG further intensified the particle therapy research by establishing the PARTREC facility in 2019. PARTREC is a dedicated research center embedded in the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Biomedical Sciences and Technology, and works in synergy with the existing clinical proton facility, the Groningen Proton Therapy Center (GPTC), which is part of the Department of Radiation Oncology of UMCG. Our strategic research priorities are related to the physics and biology of particle irradiation, with a special focus on proton therapy. This focus fits completely with the UMCG strengths (state-of-the-art infrastructure) and priorities (focus on healthy aging and on complex pathology). UMCG PARTREC operates a large superconducting cyclotron for experimental research (former KVI-CART), mainly in radiation physics and biology, to support further development of radiotherapy with ion beams. For this research program the cyclotron delivers beams of various ions ranging from protons to oxygen with energies up to 190 MeV for protons and 90 MeV per nucleon for ions of helium to oxygen. The accelerator is furthermore used for research in nuclear physics by faculty of the University of Groningen and for commercial radiation hardness testing. Over 20 FTEs of technical staff operate the accelerator facility and provide support to design and build experimental apparatus. In addition, it has recently commissioned a novel small animal irradiation platform IMPACT, based on SARRP system by XStrahl. This platform is foreseen to be used for the image guided preclinical irradiations, closely replicating the clinical workflow of imaging and irradiation. At this new infrastructure novel irradiation modalities such as ultra-high dose radiotherapy (FLASH) and Spatially Fractionated Radiotherapy (SFRT) with proton and helium beams will be available for worldwide users. UMCG PARTREC has the ability to uniquely combine technology development, preclinical and patient studies with an R&D program to demonstrate clinical and economic benefits and to continuously improve proton therapy technology and the treatment itself, while assessing the feasibility of other particles for high precision radiotherapy. UMCG PARTREC promotes multidisciplinary research in which radiation physics and biology, imaging, big-data analysis, and clinical research come together to improve the quality of proton therapy treatment and explore potential benefits of other particles for cancer treatment. Over 30 PhD students and post graduate students are currently dedicated to particle therapy research.