Laura was born and raised in East Tennessee. Her pathway to medical physics began at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee. From there she was on to the University of Denver, Denver, Colorado for her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics and then onto a post-doc position in a radiation oncology department which ran concurrently with a CAMPEP accredited Certificate Program in Medical Physics, both at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From a very young age, she wanted to study and be involved in the treatment of disease.
Her research experience spans from electron paramagnetic resonance imaging and methodology development to developing deep learning models for adaptive radiotherapy treatment planning. In her own words, “My research experience has given me a much deeper understanding of the treatment planning process, and that knowledge will benefit me while evaluating treatment plan quality and day-to-day work in the clinic.”
Laura joined the Brown/RIH medical physics residency program in 2021. She says, “The training program here is deeply devoted to high quality patient care and teaching the next generation of medical physicists.”
In her spare time, Laura enjoys spending time with family, going on walks, and quilting.
Edwin was born and raised in Ghana; a beautiful cultural-filled country located in the western part of Africa. He did complete his undergraduate studies at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and obtained a BS degree in Physics with concentration in medical physics. Edwin moved to the United States to continue his higher education and joined the Florida A&M University (FAMU), Tallahassee, FL, as a graduate student to pursue Ph. D. Dr. Quashie obtained his Physics Ph. D. from FAMU. His dissertation comprises of rigorous research work in the computational condensed matter physics. He was a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) scholar, and his research was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE). After his Ph. D., he joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA, where he was appointed as a postdoctoral research scientist for continuing his research focused primarily on understanding different materials under energetic particle irradiation using the state-of-the-art theoretical and computational methods for modeling these rather complicated condensed matter systems.
He was always fascinated by the application of physics in Medicine and that led him to pursue a career in Medical Physics. He became a postdoc fellow at Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), Milwaukee, WI, and obtained a CAMPEP accredited Graduate Certificate in Medical Physics. His research at MCW includes developing a practical method for treatment planning for retreatment and adaptive radiation therapy based on organ-specific biologically effective dose (BED), involving dose accumulation based on deformable image registration and calculations of IsoBED parameters for different organs at risk (OAR).
In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family/friends, watching movies, cooking and reading investment newsletters.