Medical Physics Division Labs
The goal of our department's medical physics labs is to develop novel imaging and therapy technologies to improve the precision and outcome of radiation treatments with high efficiency and minimal imaging dose.
Members
Yannick Poirier, PhD
Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology
Director of Preclinical Physics
Kevin Byrne
Research Medical Physicist
Department of Radiation Oncology
Research Highlights
Radiation Dosimetry Verification Services to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' (NIAID) Radiation and Nuclear Countermeasures Program (RNCP)
In 2026, the University of Maryland received a five-year award to provide National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)’s Radiation Dosimetry Verification Services to NIAID’s Radiation and Nuclear Countermeasures Program (RNCP).
Led by Radiation Oncology Department members Yannick Poirier, PhD, and Kevin Byrne, this program will provide independent radiation dosimetry verification and harmonization across NIAID-funded radiation medical countermeasure studies. The goal is straightforward but critically important: to ensure that radiation doses used in preclinical studies are accurately measured, independently verified, and reproducibly delivered across laboratories.
The program will address this challenge through standardized dosimetric oversight across a diverse portfolio of laboratories, radiation sources, animal models, and irradiation geometries. This will include site visits, development of standardized operating procedures (SOPs), and remote dosimetry using 3-D printed dosimetric phantoms to independently verify radiation exposures without requiring animals or cadavers to be transported between institutions.
Reliable radiation exposure is fundamental to evaluating medical countermeasures against radiation injury, but differences in radiation sources, treatment geometries, dosimetry systems, and experimental techniques can introduce substantial variability between studies. Without accurate and harmonized dosimetry, it can be difficult to determine whether differences in biological outcomes reflect true biological effects or simply differences in the radiation exposure.
This effort builds on our broader work in preclinical radiation physics, experimental dosimetry, radiation biology, and FLASH dosimetry at the University of Maryland's Division of Medical Physics and Division of Translational Radiation Sciences (DTRS). Ultimately, the goal of this project is to help establish more rigorous, reproducible, and comparable radiation exposures across preclinical research –strengthening the scientific foundation for the development of radiation medical countermeasures.
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