Past AAPM President: 2013.

I began my journey in medical physics as a physics undergraduate at the University of Kentucky, subsequently completing a terminal master's degree there with a clinical training period under Dr. Charles Coffey. With encouragement from Charlie and Dr. Yosh Maruyama (Chair of Radiation Medicine), I moved to MD Anderson to work under Drs. Bob Shalek and Will Hanson at the Radiological Physics Center (RPC). The experience at the RPC was incredible—meeting and working with some of the luminary medical physicists around the globe. After 3 years at the RPC, I returned to graduate school to study magnetic resonance (MR) under Dr. Ponnada Narayana. After completing my PhD, I returned to MD Anderson as Associate Director of the RPC. After 2 years, I was recruited by the Department of Diagnostic Radiology to initiate a research program in MR. A couple of years later, Dr. Bill Murphy came to MD Anderson as Head of Diagnostic Imaging and asked me to start building a “world class medical imaging physics department”. Being young and naïve, I agreed! I immediately recruited Jeff Shepard to develop a clinical imaging physics program. I then turned my sights to recruiting my graduate lab partner and friend, Ed Jackson, to help build the academic program. Jeff and Ed will always be associated with the development of the Department of Imaging Physics at MD Anderson. As everyone knows, Ed left MD Anderson after 20 years of tireless service to become Chair of Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin. Seeing Ed recognized for his accomplishments by being selected as Chair at UW was perhaps one of my happiest and proudest days. His impact there was impressive and his untimely death from a glioma was a loss to the entire medical physics community. During my leadership at MD Anderson, we established an outstanding clinical medical physics program, built the imaging component of the graduate education program to be competitive nationally, established the first CAMPEP accredited clinical imaging physics residency in the United States and established a research enterprise that now has over $5 million a year in NIH/NCI funding. The department has grown to include 25 qualified clinical medical physicists and seven medical physicists dedicated to research. I was President-elect, President and Chairman of the Board of AAPM from 2012 to 2014. My year as President-elect was mired by a lawsuit brought against the Association by a vendor. Reaching a positive judgment in this matter was a major accomplishment for the leadership of AAPM. Against the backdrop of the time-consuming lawsuit issues, we were also struggling with implementation of the American Board of Radiology (ABR) requirement for candidates to be residency trained to complete the certification process. There were many concerns about our ability to grow enough residency program capacity, particularly in imaging, to meet this new requirement that the AAPM had requested of the ABR. However, we were able to promote adequate new residencies, including several residency slots supported by a grant from the Radiological Society of North America. The other “big event” started during my time as President-elect was the assessment of our lease space in the Center for Physics in College Park, MD. We had been in the space for 20 years but had never really renegotiated the lease terms or assessed that greater DC market for opportunities. In short, our consultants pointed out that buying a building would be by far our best choice if we could afford $1 million to make the process happen—and at the time we had about $8 million in the bank. So, over about a 2-year period we researched and identified a building in Alexandria, VA that suited our needs in a much better environment. The City of Alexandria sweetened the deal with very aggressive bond financing, resulting in a virtual financial windfall for the Association and a permanent new HQ building that we owned! It is gratifying to walk into that space and know AAPM owns it. Finally, at the end of my tenure in the Executive chain, John Boone asked me to Chair an ad hoc committee to review our publishing agreement with the Institute of Physics. Ultimately, we were able to change publishers to Wiley and realize about a $500,000 per year better return from the publication of our primary scientific journal, Medical Physics, while also supporting the Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics. The annual meeting in 2013 was held in Indianapolis. The host committee did a great job, the weather generally cooperated, and we had a wonderful meeting in one of America's great mid-size cities. The night out was held at the football stadium and I think everyone had a grand time pretending to be Peyton Manning! In summary, while my Presidency journey started out distracted by a very significant legal challenge to the AAPM, I think we made significant accomplishments in our development of adequate residency programs to meet the new ABR requirements, we made a significant move to a new HQ location with ownership equity and entered into a new publishing agreement with significantly better financial terms. Finally, my time in the Presidential chain was full of great interactions with many highly motivated volunteer members!